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ENGLISH   LITERATURE 
DURING  THE  LIFETIME 
OF  SHAKESPEARE.. 


BY 


FELIX   E.  SCHELLING 

Professor  in  the  University  of  Pennsylvani.^^ 


NEW   YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND   COMPANY 

1910 


Copyright,  igio 

BY 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


Piiblished  September,  iqio 


'^^oiin 


Cf)f  fLafetetUf  ^rfBB 

R.  R.  DONNELLEY  &  SONS  COMPANY 
CHICAGO 


PREFACE 

The  following  pages  attempt  to  tell  once  more,  and  as  far 
as  possible  at  first  hand,  the  fascinating  story  of  Elizabethan 
literature.  But  the  tale  has  been  somewhat  compressed  to 
treat  what  preceded  the  birth  of  Shakespeare  with  brevity, 
and  what  followed  his  death  merely  by  indications  and  sug- 
gestions. This  compression  has  seemed  the  more  justifiable 
because  Shakespeare's  own  work,  thus  contemplated  in  what 
surrounded  it,  gives  to  the  subject  a  closer  unity,  and  because 
the  transition  from  literature,  as  an  Elizabethan  conceived  and 
practised  it,  to  what  it  came  to  be  regarded  in  the  time  of 
Charles  I,  was  well  on  its  way  by  the  year  1616. 

This  book  departs  in  method  from  the  customary  arrange- 
ment of  material  by  way  of  annals.  It  has  neither  listed  authors 
in  the  order  of  their  birth  nor  books  in  the  chronology  of  their 
publication;  but  it  has  sought  to  view  the  subject  in  large  by 
the  recognition  of  a  succession  of  literary  movements,  develop- 
ments, and  varieties  in  poetry,  drama,  and  prose,  at  times 
identified  with  a  great  name,  at  others  grouped  merely  because 
of  subject-matter  or  likeness  in  origin  or  purpose.  It  is  be- 
lieved that  the  reader  can  experience  no  greater  difficulty  in 
seeking  for  Jonson,  for  example,  in  half  a  dozen  chapters, 
than  he  might  undergo  in  an  effort  to  trace,  let  us  say,  the 
pastoral  form  of  poetry  through  the  scattered  annals  of  a  score 
of  poets,  ordered  with  chronological  precision.  It  is  the 
writer's  conviction  that  until  the  history  of  literature  cuts 
loose  from  the  tyranny  of  biography,  as  history  at  large  has 
long  since  cut  loose,  little  progress  can  be  made  toward  the 
realization  of  the  higher  aims  of  literary  study.  These  he 
believes  to  consist  less  in  the  acquisition  of  a  mass  of  informa- 
tion —  however  desirable  information  may  be  —  about  books, 
authors,  and  borrowings,  about  style  and  the  bare  bones  of 
plays,  than  in  the  recognition  of  those  unseen  influences, 
literary  and  other,  by  which  even  the  greatest  man  becomes 

V 


vi  PREFACE 

the  product  of  his  age.  These  higher  aims  he  finds,  too,  In 
the  ideals  that  great  men  have  set  up  to  write  for  and  to  live 
by,  and  in  the  nature  of  the  artistry  w^hich,  in  as  many  differ- 
ing beautiful  forms  as  the  forms  of  nature,  results  from  this 
finest  phase  of  the  activity  of  men. 

History  nov^  chronicles  the  common  man.  Literature 
should  chronicle  the  common  book,  if  we  are  to  have  a  full 
understanding  of  the  age.  For  a  knowledge  of  the  relations 
of  minor  authors,  the  quality,  even  the  short-comings  and 
inferiorities  of  their  work,  give  us  a  mean  level  from  which 
to  judge  the  heights  attained  by  choicer  spirits.  This  book 
offers  no  apology  for  its  treatment  of  the  works  of  minor  poets, 
dramatists,  and  pamphleteers  where  such  treatment  is  de- 
manded for  the  completeness  of  the  picture.  On  the  other 
hand  it  makes  no  claim  to  exhaustiveness,  as  neither  its  plan 
nor  the  demands  of  a  just  proportion  could  support  such  a 
claim. 

The  drama  was  the  most  potent  form  of  Elizabethan  artis- 
tic expression.  It  is  obvious  that  in  it  Shakespeare  literally 
dominated  his  age,  as  he  radiated  after  his  time  a  wider 
literary  influence  than  that  of  any  other  English  author. 
Shakespeare  accordingly  dominates  this  book,  the  history  of 
literature  in  his  age.  For  not  only  is  the  romantic  drama  his 
sovereign  domain,  but  in  the  lyric,  too,  Shakespeare  expressed 
the  highest  reach  of  his  time.  From  the  historical  point  of 
view,  however,  other  men  equally  aflPected  their  fellow-sub- 
jects of  Elizabeth  and  James.  Sidney,  Spenser,  Donne,  and 
Jonson,  in  poetry;  Lyly,  Hooker,  Bacon,  and  the  translators  of 
the  English  Bible,  in  prose:  these  were  the  effective  spirits  of 
the  time  to  be  recognized  as  such  not  only  for  the  divergent 
rays  that  each,  as  a  lens,  spread  after  far  and  wide,  but  for  the 
converging  light  that  each  drew  to  himself  from  his  predeces- 
sors, ancient,  modern,  foreign,  or  contemporary  at  home. 

The  short  quotations  from  Elizabethan  writers  that  occur 
in  this  book  have  been  frankly  modernized;  as  what  may  be 
lost  of  the  flavor  of  quaintness  is  more  than  compensated  in 
ready  intelligibility  to  the  modern  reader.  So,  too,  old 
titles  have  been  curtailed  at  need  and  rendered  into  modern 


PREFACE  vii 

spelling,  except  where  custom  demands,  as  in  The  Faery 
Queen,  for  example,  or  T he  Defense  of  Poesy,  a  species  of 
compromise.  The  Bibliography  presents,  in  alphabetical 
arrangement,  a  list  of  authors  who  were  writing  or  publish- 
ing during  the  lifetime  of  Shakespeare.  It  purposes  to  give, 
in  condensed  form,  a  representation  of  their  literary  activity 
and  to  indicate  where  their  works  may  be  read  in  modern  avail- 
able editions.  A  few  items  of  the  Bibliography,  such  as  "the 
Martin  Marprelate  Controversy,"  Character-writing,  or  the 
English  Bible,  are  entered  independently  of  any  proper  name. 
Cross  references,  as  in  these  cases,  for  example,  to  Penry, 
Overbury,  Coverdale,  and  others,  should  make  these  entries 
readily  available  in  consultation. 

Tamworth,  July,  1910.  F.  E.  S. 


CONTENTS 

Chapter  I 

THE  LITERATURE  OF  FACT 

England  at  the  birth  of  Shakespeare,  i. — Character,  policy,  and 
success  of  Elizabeth,  2. — Literature  in  the  earlier  years  of  her  reign,  2. 
— The  Renaissance  in  Italy  and  England,  4. — Tudor  historical  litera- 
ture in  prose,  5. — The  Mirror  for  Magistrates,  6. — Latin  influences  on 
English  prose  style,  8. — Nature  of  Elizabethan  Latinism,  9. — The 
prose  chronicles,  Holinshed,  10. — Harrison's  Description  of  England, 
II. — Rudimentary  conception  of  history  among  the  chroniclers,  12. — 
Shakespeare  and  Holinshed,  13. — Foxe's  Book  of  Martyrs,  14. — The 
voyagers,  Hakluyt,  his  various  collections  and  translations,  15. — 
Purchase,  the  continuator  of  Hakluyt,  and  others,  17. — The  Last  Fight 
of  the  Revenge,  17-18. 

Chapter  II 
LITERATURE  OF  THE  COTERIE 

The  gentleman  of  the  Renaissance,  19. — Origin  of  modern  English 
poetry  in  the  court,  Wyatt  and  Surrey,  20. — The  limitations  of  their 
poetry,  and  their  services  to  English  versification,  21. — Gascoigne  and 
his  associates,  22. — Sir  Philip  Sidney,  his  life  and  education,  23. — 
His  poetry  that  of  the  coterie,  24. — The  Areopagus  and  its  ideals,  25. 
— Sidney's  experiments  in  classical  and  Italian  versification,  27. — 
His  critical  and  poetical  tenets.  The  Defense  of  Poesy,  27. — The 
poetry  of  Sidney,  Astrophel  and  Stella,  29. — Sidney  and  Lady  Rich, 
30. — Sidney's  alleged  borrowings,  31. — Services  of  Sidney  to  English 
poetry,  32-33. 

Chapter  III 

THE  NEW  CULTIVATED  PROSE 

John  Lyly,  the  Euphuist,  his  life  and  education,  34. — His  novel 
Euphues  and  its  success,  35. — Mistakes  as  to  Euphues,  36. — Euphuism 
a  rhetorical  prose  style,  37. — Its  use  of  alliteration  and  other  devices, 
38. — Euphuism  before  Lyly,  North,  Pettie,  39. — The  fiction  of  Greene, 
Nash,  and  minor  imitators  of  Lyly,  40. — Sidney's  Arcadia,  its  romantic 
and  poetic  quality,  41. — Crowded  incidents  of  The  Arcadia,  42. — 
Its  style,  43. — Services  of  Lyly  and  Sidney  to  English  prose,  44. 

Chapter  IV 

SPENSER,  THE  "  NEV^  POET" 

Life  and  education  of  Edmund  Spenser,  45. — His  friendship  with 
Harvey   and   experiments  with  classical   versification,  47. — The  Shep- 

ix 


X  CONTENTS 

herds'  Calendar,  48. — Its  serious  import  and  poetic  quality,  49. — 
Spenser  in  Ireland,  50. — Colin  Clout,  51. — Spenser's  contemporary 
success  in  poetry,  52. — His  marriage,  53. — His  Vieiv  of  the  Present 
State  of  Ireland,  54. — His  relations  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  55. — His  un- 
timely death,  55. — The  Faery  Queen,  its  general  design,  56. — Its  poetic 
art,  58. — Its  allegory,  59. — The  Spenserian  stanza,  60. — The  paradox 
of  Spenser's  genius,   61-62. 

Chapter  V         ^ 

LYLY  AND  THE  DRAMA  AT  COURT 

Elements  of  the  drama  in  earlier  Tudor  times,  63. — The  first 
regular  plays  and  the  classical  influences  on  them,  64. — Influence  of 
the  court  on  the  drama,  66. — The  boy  companies  and  other  Eliza- 
bethan actors,  67. — The  choirmaster  as  theatrical  manager,  68. — Lyly's 
traffic  with  the  stage,  69. — His  comedies,  70. — His  Endimion,  its  occa- 
sional and  allegorical  character,  71. — Peele  and  his  Arraignment  of 
Paris,  73. — Presentation  of  court  plays,«^76. — Settings  of  a  private 
theater,  78. — The  theater  in  Blackfriars,  78. — Lyly  and  his  influence 
as  a  dramatist,  79. 

Chapter  VI         -yj 

MARLOWE  AND  HIS  FELLOWS  IN  THE  POPULAR  DRAMA 

Origin  of  the  professional  player,  80. — Early  companies,  81. — 
Shakespeare's  company  and  his  relation  to  It,  81. — Elizabethan  play- 
houses and  their  sites,  82. — Structure  of  the  Elizabethan  playhouse, 
84. — Settings,  scenery,  and  properties,  85. — The  playhouse  and  the 
city  fathers,  87. — Repute  and  standing  of  players,  88. — Pre-Shake- 
spearean  plays  on  the  common  stage,  89. — The  classics,  Italian  story, 
and  actual  life  the  three  mainsprings  of  Elizabethan  drama,  90. — 
The  work  of  Peele  for  the  popular  stage,  90. — Robert  Greene  and 
his  work  in  the  drama,  91. — Thomas  Kyd,  his  Spanish  Tragedy  and 
other  plays,  93. — Christopher  Marlowe,  his  Tamburlaine,  and  his 
consciousness  of  his  dramatic  departure,  93. — Faustus,  and  other 
dramas  of  Marlowe,  97. — Services  of  Kyd  and  Marlowe  to  the  new 
romantic  drama,  loo. — Alleyn,  Burbage,  Shakespeare,  and  the  sub- 
stantial returns  of  dramatic  success,   loi. 


Chapter  VII 

THE  PAMPHLET  AND  THE  PROSE  OF  CONTROVERSY 

London  and  the  Elizabethan  reading  public,  102. — Diversity  and 
popularity  of  the  pamphlet,  103. — Its  character  as  incipient  journal- 
ism, 104. — The  pamphleteer,  Churchyard,  105. — Breton,  his  ephemeral 
verse  and  prose,  106. — Samuel  Rowlands,  107. — Greene  as  a  pamphle- 
teer, and  writer  of  fiction,  107. — His  conycatching  pamphlets,  109. — 
His  autobiographical  confessions,  no. — Lodge's  Rosalynd  and  other 
stories,  no. — The  Nash-Harvey  pamphlet  war,  in. — The  Marprelate 
controversy,  113. — The  part  of  Lyly,  Nash,  and  Bacon  in  it,  113. — 
Nash's  Jaclk  Wilton,  115. — The  idiomatic  qualities  of  the  prose  of 
Nash,  his  vigor,  satire,  and  humor,  116. — Dekker  as  a  pamphleteer, 
117. — Occasional  worth  and   eloquence  of  the  pamphleteers,   119-120. 


CONTENTS  ^  xi 

Chapter  VIII 

THE  PASTORAL  LYRIC  AND  THE  SONNET 

Nature  and  place  of  the  Elizabethan  lyric, ^120. — Origin  of  the 
English  lyric  of  art  with  Wyatt  and  Surrey,  ^2*. — Earlier  miscellanies 
of  lyrical  poetry,  121. — The  pastoral  decade,  122. — England's  Helicon, 
123. — The  lyrics  of  Greville  and  Soijthwell,  125. — Barnes,  Watson, 
and  the  Italianists,  126. — The  conventional  "  conceit,"  127. — -The 
decade  of  the  sonnet,  128. — Dam«4^-and  Constable,  129. — French  in- 
fluence on  the  sonneteers,  130. — The  sonnet  craze  at  its  height,  130. 
— The  form  of  the  sonnet,  131. — Varieties  of  the  Elizabethan  sonnet, 
131. — Spiritual  sonnets,  132. — The  occasional  sonnet,  133. — "Conceits" 
in  the  sonnet,  134. — End  of  the'sonnet  craze,  135. — The  lyrical  poetry 
of  Raleigh,  136. — Drayton's  sonnets,  137. — Spenser's  Amoretti,  their 
subjective  significance,  139. — Shakespeare  and  his  patrons,  141. — The 
Sonnets  of  Shakespeare,  142. — Autobiographical  and  other  interpreta- 
tions of  them,  14-1. — Their  defects  and  superlative  merits,  146-147. 


Chapter  IX 

SHAKESPEARE  IN   COMEDY  AND  IN  CHRONICLE  HISTORY 

Known  events  in  the  life  of  Shakespeare,  148. — His  education  and 
natural  endowments,  159. — His  choice  of  the  stage  as  a  profession 
and  early  success,  153. — His  earliest  work,  its  imitative  character, 
153. — Influence  of  Lyly  on  Shakespeare,  154. — Experimental  comedies, 
155. — The  Merchant  of  Venice,  156. — A  Midsummer-Night's  Dream, 
157. — The  Henry  VI  trilogy,  158. — Greene's  envious  allusion  to 
Shakespeare,  159. — Shakespeare's  two  Richards  and  Marlowe's 
Edward  II,  i6o. — Height  of  the  chronicle  play  in  Henry  IF,  161. — 
Chronicle  plays  by  other  hands,  163. — Plays  on  mythical  British  his- 
,  tory,  163. — Meres'  recognition  of  the  character  and  standing  of  Shake- 
speare, 164. — Much  Ado,  As  You  Like  It,  and  T-zvelfth  Night,  164. — 
All's  Well  and  Measure  for  Measure,  166. — The  problematic  nature 
of  Troilus  and  Cressida,  167. — Shakespeare  and  King  James,  168. 
— The  orderly  growth  of  Shakespeare's  genius,  169-171. 


Chapter  X  \ 

VERNACULAR  DRAMA  OF  DEKKER,  HEYWOOD,  AND 
MIDDLETON 

Dekker  as  a  dramatist,  172. — His  Old  Fortunatus,  173. — His  Shoe- 
makers' Holiday  and  other  comedies,  174. — His  dramatic  portraiture, 
176. — Thomas  Heywood,  178. — The  number  and  variety  of  his  plays, 
A  Woman  Killed  <with  Kindness,  180. — Improvidence  of  the  lives  of 
Heywood  and  Dekker,  181. — Philip  Henslowe  and  his  Diary,  182. — 
The  theatrical  business  in  his  time,  183. — Arden  of  Fever  sham  and 
other  murder  plays,  184. — Realism  of  the  bourgeois  drama,  185. — 
Middleton  and  his  comedies  of  London  life,  i86. — His  collaboration 
with  Rowley  and  others,  his  imitators,  187. — Romantic  plays  of 
Middleton  and  Rowley,  188. — A  Fair  Quarrel,  189. — Middleton  as  a 
dramatist,   190. 


xii  CONTENTS 

Chapter  XI 

LATER  ANTHOLOGIES  AND  LYRICS  TO  BE  SET  TO  MUSIC 

Early  miscellanies  of  poetry,  191. — Davison's  Poetical  Rhapsody, 
192. — Elizabethan  music,  192. — The  Elizabethan  song-book,  194. — The 
madrigal,  195. — Poets  of  the  song-books,  196. — Dowland,  Morley,  and 
other  Elizabethan  musicians,  198. — Thomas  Campion,  199. — His  metri- 
cal felicit}-,  200. — Songs  of  the  drama,  2oi. — Dekker,  Nash,  and  other 
contemporaries  of  Shakespeare,  202. — The  songs  of  Shakespeare,  203. 
— Metrical  variety  and  adequacy  of  the  song-writers,  204. — Folk-lore 
and  balladry  as  sources  of  Elizabethan  songs,  205. — Fletcher  and 
Joirson  as  writers  of  songs,  206. — Heywood's  songs  and  Webster's,  208. 

Chapter  XII 

EPIC,  NARRATIVE,  AND  PASTORAL  VERSE 

Elizabethan  epic  verse,  209. — The  historical  epics  of  Daniel  and 
Drayton,  211. — Life  and  literary  activity  of  Drayton,  212. — Warner 
and  other  writers  of  historical  verse,  213. — Erotic  narrative  verse, 
214. — Marlowe's  Hero  and  Leander,  215. — Venus  and  Adonis  and 
Lucrece,  216. — Lodge,  Marston,  and  others  in  like  verse,  217. — Sir  John 
Davies  and  his  poetry,  218. — The  political  verse  of  Greville  and 
Daniel's  Musophilus,  219. — Drayton's  Polyolbion,  220. — The  Spen- 
serians,  Giles  and  Phineas  Fletcher,  221. — Elizabethan  eclogues  and 
pastorals,  223. — William  Browne  as  a  pastoral  poet,  225. — The  pas- 
toral ideal,  227-228. 

Chapter  XIII 

JONSON  AND  THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION 

Life  of  Jonson,  229. — Every  Man  in  His  Humor  and  the  Jonsonian 
theory  of  "humors,"  230. — Its  popularity  and  imitators,  231. — Jonson 
and  the  war  of  the  theaters,  232. — Satire  on  the  Elizabethan  stage, 
233. — Personal  allusions  in  Every  Man  Out  of  His  Humor  and  other 
plays,  234. — Poetaster  and  Dekker's  reply,  Satiromastix,  236. — Shake- 
speare and  the  "  war,"  238. — The  allusion  in  Hamlet  to  the  "  war," 
239. — Senecan  and  other  plays  on  Roman  history,  240. — Shakespeare's 
Julius  CcBsar,  240. — Jonson's  Sejanus  and  Catiline,  241. — Jonson's 
collaboration  in  Eastivard  Hoe,  242. — Volpone  and  Jonson's  larger 
views  of  comedy^  243. — The  Alchemist  and  other  comedies  of  London 
scene,  244. — The  last  plays  of  Jonson,  244. — The  non-dramatic  poetry 
of  Jonson,  245. — Its  classicality  and  sense  of  finish,  246. — Jonson's 
catholicity  of  taste,  248. — His  unparalleled  influence  on  the  trend  of 
English  literature,  249. 

Chapter  XIV 

SHAKESPEARE,  WEBSTER,  AND  THE  HEYDAY  OF 
ROMANTIC   TRAGEDY 

Range  and  variety  of  Elizabethan  tragedy,  250. — Seneca  and 
English  tragedy,  250. — Influence  of  Kyd  and  Marlowe  on  Shakespeare, 
251. — Romeo  and  Juliet,  252. — Shakespeare,  Jonson,  and  others  in  plays 
on  classical   story,   253. — Antony  and   Cleopatra,  255. — Marlowe   and 


CONTENTS  xiii 

Chapman  in  tragedy  on  modern  foreign  history,  255. — Other  dramas 
of  this  type,  257. — The  tragedy  of  revenge,  a  revival  of  Kyd  by 
Marston,  257. — Hamlet's  place  in  this  group,  258. — Chettle's  and 
Tourneur's  tragedies  of  revenge,  259. — Tragedies  of  perverted  woman- 
hood, 260. — Webster,  his  White  Devil,  The  Duchess  of  Malfi,  and 
other  plays,  261. — Shakespeare's  Othello,  the  master  tragedy  of  jeal- 
ousy, 264. — Kinff  Lear,  Macbeth,  265. — The  tragic  art  of  Shakespeare, 
266. — It?  growth  and  development,  267. — Shifting  of  Shakespeare's 
point  of  view  with  advancing  life,  269. — General  qualities  of  Eliza- 
bethan tragedy  and  of  Shakespeare's,  26^. — Shakespeare's  attitude 
towards  women,  270-271. 

Chapter  XV 

TRANSLATION  IN  VERSE  AND  PROSE 

Elizabethan  interest  in  foreign  literatures,  272. — Range  and  di- 
versity of  Elizabethan  translation,  273. — Translations  of  the  classics, 
274. — Life  and  education  of  George  Chapman,  274. — His  translation 
of  Homer,  275. — North's  Plutarch,  Holland  as  a  translator,  278. — 
Translations  from  the  Italian,  Harington's  Orlando,  280. — Painter's 
Palace  of  Pleasure  and  other  like  collections  of  Italian  tales,  281. — 
Use  of  these  as  sources  for  drama,  283. — Other  works  translated,  284. 
— Translations  from  the  Spanish,  284. — Shelton's  Don  Quixote,  285. — 
Translations  from  the  French,  285. — Florio's  Montaigne,  ^6. — Trans- 
lation of  the  English  Bible,  286. — Tyndale  and  the  Bible,  287. — 
Coverdale  and  the  Great  Bible,  288. — The  Bishops'  and  other  Bibles, 
289. — The  Authorized  Version  of  the  Bible,  290-201. 

Chapter  XVI         l^ 

HISTORY,    DIVINITY,   AND    OTHER   PROSE   OF    CONTEMPO- 
RARY COMMENT 

Elizabethan  conception  of  history,  292. — William  Camden  and  his 
works,  292. — The  Histories  of  England  of  Ha>'^vard,  Speed,  and 
Daniel,  293. — Histories  of  foreign  countries,  Grimestone  and  Knolles, 
294. — Raleigh  and  his  History  of  the  World,  295. — Antiquarian  writ- 
ings, Stow's  Survey  of  London,  297. — Sir  Henry  Wotton  and  his 
literary  projects,  298. — Educational  works,  state  documents,  and  minor 
prose  writings,  299. — Reginald  Scott's  Discovery  of  Witchcraft  and 
the  literary  works  of  King  James,  301. — Books  of  travel,  Moryson's 
Itinerary,  Coryate,  Lithgow,  and  Sandys,  302. — Greville's  Life  of 
Sidney,  304. — Jonson's  Discoveries,  305. — Theological  and  controver- 
sial writings,  306. — Calvin  and  the  Puritan  ideal  of  church  and 
state,  308. — Richard  Hooker,  his  life  and  personality,  309. — The  Laivs 
of  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  311. — Its  service  to  the  Established  Church, 
its  limitations  and  style,  312. — Donne's  Sermons  and  the  Contempla- 
tions of  Hall,  JJ4. — Minor  theologians  and  pulpiters,  315. 

Chapter  XVII 

ELIZABETHAN  SATIRE,  THE  EPIGRAM,  AND  THE 
" CHARACTER " 

Nature  and  form  of  satire,  316. — The  Roman  satirists  in  their 
influence  on  English  satire,  317. — Wyatt  the  earliest  English  imitator 


xiv  CONTENTS 

of  classical  satire,  318. — Hake  and  Gascoigne,  319. — The  Satires  of 
Donne,  319. — Those  of  Lodge,  321. — The  satires  of  Hall,  322. — 
Obscurity  in  poetry,  323. — The  satires  of  Marston,  324. — Suppression 
of  satirical  writings  by  ecclesiastical  authority,  326. — Elizabethan  epi- 
grams, 326. — Epigrams  of  the  reign  of  James,  327. — Jonson  as  an 
epigrammatist,  328. — Irregular  satire  in  prose,  pamphlets,  and  broad- 
sides, 329. — Puritan  attacks  on  social  abuses,  Stubb's  Anatomy  of 
Abuse,  330. — The  "  Character,"  its  origin  and  forerunners,  331. — The 
Characters  of  Hall,  332. — Sir  Thomas  Overbury,  his  tragic  death,  333. 
— His  Characters,  334. — Breton's  imitations  of  the  character  and  the 
essay,  335. — Minor  character-writing,  336. 


Chapter  XVHI 

BACON,  JURIST,  PHILOSOPHER,  AND  ESSAYIST 

Life  of  Francis  Bacon,  337. — His  friendship  with  Essex  and  enmity 
with  Coke,  338. — ^Bacon  and  Elizabeth,  339. — His  conduct  towards 
Essex,  340. — His  honors  in  the  reign  of  James,  340. — His  disgrace,  341. 
— The  Advancement  of  Learning,  342. — The  Great  Instauration,  343. 
— The  Baconian  induction,  344. — His  place  as  a  philosopher,  345. — 
His  literary  work,  the  Essays,  346. — Their  masterly  style  and  worldly 
wisdom,  347. — Variety  of  Bacon's  literary  style,  349. — Bacon's  mistrust 
of  English,  350. — His  interest  in  masques  his  only  touch  with  the 
drama,  350. — The  verse  of  Bacon,  its  mediocrity  and  pessimism,  351. 
— Shakespeare  and  Bacon,  354-356. 

Chapter  XIX 

DONNE  AND   HIS  PLACE  AMONG  LYRICAL  POETS 

The  life  and  education  of  John  Donne,  357. — His  early  poetry, 
its  realism,  359. — His  secular  lyrical  poetry,  360. — His  scholarship, 
the  vogue  of  his  poetry  and  his  careless  attitude  towards  it,  361. — 
His  romantic  marriage,  361. — Years  of  poverty  and  depression,  Bia- 
thanatos,  controversial  writings,  363. — Mistakes  about  Donne,  "  The 
metaphysical  school,"  364. — Qualities  of  the  poetry  of  D^nne,  365. — 
The  freedom  of  his  versification  and  elaboration  of  his  stanza,  366. 
— The  abstraction  of  his  ideas  and  originality  of  his  thought  and 
style,  367. — His  use  of  conceit,  368. — Influence  of  Donne  on  later 
poets,  371. — William  Drummond,  his  life  and  reading,  373. — His 
poetry,  374. — His  occasional  verse  and  others  works,  375. — The  posi- 
tion of  Donne  among  lyrical  poets,  376-377. 

Chapter  XX 

DRAMA  AT  THE  UNIVERSITIES,  THE  PASTORAL  DRAMA, 
AND  THE  MASQUE 

Early  performance  of  plays  at  schools  and  at  the  universities,  377. 
— The  Parnassus  trilogy  at  Oxford,  379. — Academic  estimates  of 
Shakespeare  and  Jonson,  381. — Allegorical  college  plays.  Lingua,  381. 
— Prevalence  at  the  universities  of  dramatic  entertainments,  382. — 
Latin  tragedies  and  comedies,  383. — Ignoramus  and  King  James'  ap- 


CONTENTS  XV 

preciation  of  it,  384. — Nature  of  pastoral  drama,  384. — The  pastoral 
element  in  earlier  Elizabethan  comedies,  385. — Jonson  and  Shake- 
speare, and  the  pastoral,  385. — The  true  pastoral  drama,  Daniel's 
Queen's  Arcadia,  386. — Fletcher's  Faithful  Shepherdess,  388. — Other 
minor  pastoral  dramas,  389. — Antiquity  of  masquing,  391. — The 
masque  defined,  391. — Daniel's  masques  and  others',  393. — The  pre- 
eminence of  Jonson  as  a  writer  of  masques,  393. — His  development 
of  the  antimasque,  394. — Masques  on  the  occasion  of  the  marriage 
of  the  Princess  Elizabeth,  395. — Allegory  and  classical  reference  of 
the  Jacobean  masque,  396. — Other  contemporary  pageantry,  396. — 
Masques  in  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  and  others,  397-398. 


Chapter  XXI 
SHAKESPEARE  AND  THE  NEW  DRAMA  OF  FLETCHER 

Chronology  of  the  dramatic  authors  of  Shakespeare's  time,  399.— 
Tragicomedy,  400. — The  life  of  John  Fletcher  and  Francis  Beaumont, 
400. — Their  collaboration  in  the  writing  of  plays,  402. — Criteria 
of  contrast  in  their  work  and  in  that  of  Massinger,  403. — Change 
in  the  popular  dramatic  taste,  in  the  earlier  years  of  James,  404. — 
Philaster  the  typical  tragicomedy,  405. — Other  plays  of  the  type,  406. 
— The  "  dramatic  romances "  of  Shakespeare,  their  contrasts  with 
the  tragicomedy  of  Fletcher,  407. — Pericles,  408. — Cymbeline  and  The 
Winter's  Tale,  409. — The  Tempest,  411. — The  romances  of  Shake- 
speare unmarked  by  any  deterioration  in  art,  412. — Later  years  of 
Shakespeare,  413. — His  probable  association  with  Fletcher  in  Henry 
VIII  and  The  Tino  Noble  Kinsmen,  414. — Fletcher's  comedies  of  man- 
ners, 415. — His  romantic  plays  and  their  levy  on  Spanish  sources,  416. 
— The  Maid's  Tragedy,  Bonduca,  and  other  serious  plays  of  Fletcher, 
417. — Fletcher    the    completest    of    English    dramatists,    419. 

England  and  literature  at  the  death  of  Shakespeare,  421. — New 
books  of  the  time  and  old  ones  reprinted,  422. — Relative  popularity 
of  the  dramatists  and  other  authors  as  witnessed  by  the  contempo- 
rary demand  for  their  printed  works,  424. — The  acknowledged  pre- 
eminence of  Shakespeare,  425. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY,  427. 
INDEX,  460. 


ENGLISH   LITERATURE   DURING   THE 
LIFETIME   OF  SHAKESPEARE 

CHAPTER  I 
THE    LITERATURE    OF    FACT 

WHEN  Shakespeare  was  born,  in  the  year  1564,  Eliza- 
beth had  been  on  her  throne  for  six  years  and  had 
already  gained,  by  the  steadiness  of  her  conduct  and  the 
wisdom  of  her  counsels,  the  loyal  affections  and  support  of 
her  people.  King  Henry's  reign  towards  its  close  had  de- 
generated into  a  reign  of  terror;  and  incompetency  ruled 
throughout  the  government  of  the  child  Edward.  More  recent 
had  been  the  bloody  reprisals  of  unhappy  and  bigoted  Queen 
Mary  in  her  misguided  endeavors  to  restore  officially  to  her 
country  the  supplanted  older  faith.  England  had  swung  in 
these  three  reigns  from  Rome  to  Geneva,  and  from  Geneva 
back  to  Rome,  impelled  by  the  fiat  of  monarchs  and  not  by 
popular  revulsions  of  belief.  But  these  things  were  now 
memories  of  the  past.  What  neither  the  example  of  Lutheran 
Germany  nor  the  despotic  will  of  Henry  could  effect,  the  fires 
of  Smithfield  had  accomplished.  England  was  at  last  become, 
if  not  wholly  Protestant,  at  least  once  and  forever  hostile  to 
the  pretensions  of  Rome;  and  the  menace  of  an  ill-assorted 
union  of  England  with  Spain,  the  danger  that  England  might 
sink,  like  the  Netherlands,  into  a  mere  province  of  the  uni- 
versal Spanish  dominion,  had  vanished  with  the  resolute 
refusal  of  Elizabeth  to  accept  the  hand  of  King  Philip. 

In  1564  Queen  Elizabeth  was  thirty-one  years  of  age,  a 
capable  and  imperious  sovereign,  skilled  in  the  tortuous 
diplomacy  of  the  age,  unerring  in  her  power  to  discern  and 
employ   men    competent    for   the    task    of  government,    and 


2  THE  LITERATURE  OF  FACT 

devoted  with  the  whole  strength  of  her  keen  intellectual 
naruie  to  the  welfare  of  England,  The  queen's  subjects  at 
large  knew  little  of  her  niggardliness  in  money  affairs,  of  her 
want  of  religious  conviction,  or  the  doubles  and  turns  of  the 
royal  policy  in  its  frequently  short-sighted  opportunism;  but 
her  immediate  servants  had  learned  that  even  by  devious 
courses  and  without  the  stay  of  a  strong  moral  principle, 
Elizabeth  might  be  trusted  to  steer  a  course  safe  and  true 
among  the  quicksands  of  international  intrigue;  and  in  their 
trust  was  begotten  the  larger  trust  of  the  nation.  Elizabeth 
had  acquiesced  in  the  accomplished  fact  of  the  French  recovery 
of  Calais;  but  she  wrested  from  Francis  and  Mary  Stuart,  a 
year  or  two  later,  the  withdrawal  of  the  French  garrison  from 
the  Scottish  town  of  Leith  and  the  acknowledgment  that 
the  realms  of  England  and  Ireland  appertained  of  right  to 
her.  Elizabeth  failed  to  obtain  the  papal  recognition  of  her 
legitimacy  and  her  right  to  succeed  to  the  crown;  but  she 
curbed  the  reactionary  zeal  of  her  sister's  clergy  as  she  held 
in  leash  the  violence  of  expectant  Protestantism,  and  in  the 
chaos  of  the  religious  uncertainty  of  the  first  few  years  of  her 
reign  achieved  the  foundations  of  a  toleration  of  opinion,  if 
not  of  worship,  which  the  other  European  countries  of  her 
age  knew  not.  Moreover  Elizabeth  was  committed  now, 
once  and  for  all,  to  the  policy  of  her  father  by  the  passing  of  the 
act  of  royal  supremacy  in  the  church,  by  her  restoration  of  the 
prayer-book,  and  by  her  decisive  refusal  either  to  admit  a 
papal  nuncio  into  her  realm  or  to  send  an  envoy  to  the  Coun- 
cil of  Trent. 

It  is  difficult  to  realize  the  poverty  of  English  literature 
in  the  first  years  of  Elizabeth's  reign  and  appreciate  how  little 
the  age  had  advanced,  despite  the  new  learning,  towards  the 
flowering  time  that  was  so  near  at  hand.  Aside  from  ser- 
mons, controversial  pamphlets,  and  chronicle  histories,  the 
chief  books  reprinted  in  these  years  were  Elyot's  Governor, 
the  Utopia  of  Sir  Thomas  More,  now  turned  into  English, 
and  the  Colloquies  of  Erasmus.  In  poetry  the  Songs  and 
Sonnets  of  Henry  Howard,  Earl  of  Surrey,  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt 
and  Others,  popularly  known  as  Tottel's  Miscellany,  attained 


LITERATURE   IN   1564  3 

a  third  edition  by  the  year  of  the  accession  of  the  queen; 
and  the  notable,  if  lugubrious,  collection  of  historical  "com- 
plaints," The  Mirror  for  Magistrates,  a  second  in  1 563. 
Other  poetry  there  was  little,  if  we  except  Tusser's  easy  rimes 
on  The  Hundreth  Good  Points  of  Husbandry,  Churchyard's 
"flyting,"  as  the  Scotch  call  such  literary  squabbling,  with 
one  "Camell,"  and  the  Eclogues  of  Barnabe  Googe.  In  the 
drama  as  little  had  appeared.  An  interlude  or  so  of  John 
Heywood,  Lusty  Juventus,  The  Nice  Wanton,  and  Thersites, 
these  were  nearly  all.  Perhaps  the  Diccon  of  Bedlam  of  the 
Stationers'  Register  of  1563  was  Gammer  Gurtons  Needle, 
though  of  this  we  can  not  be  sure.  But  an  interest  in  poetry  v 
was  awakening.  Chaucer's  complete  works,  Lydgate's 
Siege  of  Thebes  and  Langland's  Vision  of  Piers  Plowman,  all 
were  reprinted  in  1 561;  and  the  works  of  John  Heywood  ' 
appeared  collected  in  the  following  year.  The  ancients,  too,  - 
were  now  translated  into  English.  Besides  Surrey's  earlier 
attempts  of  1557,  Phaer's  translation  of  Vergil's  Mneid  came 
two  years  later,  carried  on  to  nine  books  by  1562;  while 
Jasper  Heywood  and  Alexander  Nevile  set  forth  four  of  the  1/ 
Senecan  tragedies  in  English,  and  Nicholas  Udall,  the  well 
known  author  of  Ralph  Roister  Doistcr  (long  since  written 
but  not  yet  printed),  "newly  corrected"  his  Puhlius  Teren- 
tius.  Flowers  of  Latin  Speaking.  Translations  in  part  of 
Sallust,  Cicero,  Plutarch,  Quintius  Curtius,  Cato,  and  Caesar 
were  printed  within  these  few  years,  and  Guevara's  popular 
Golden  Book,  Castiglione's  Courtier,  and  Macchiavelli's  Art 
of  War  were  Englished  for  the  unlettered.  More  suggestive 
of  what  was  to  come  was  the  translation  of  two  Italian  stories, 
Titus  and  Gisippus  and  Romeus  and  "Juliet,  both  shortly  to  be 
employed  as  subjects  for  drama;  while  the  beginnings  of 
that  deep  interest  in  everything  Italian  that  characterizes 
Elizabethan  literature  at  large  are  disclosed  in  the  informing 
works  of  William  Thomas,  his  History  of  Italy,  his  Italian 
Grammar,  and  Dictionary  of  that  language. 

The  mental  awakening  of  England,  which  some  still  dare   ' 
to  call  the  Renaissance,  and   the  similar  earlier  awakening 
in  Italy  offer  two  marked  contrasts:  a  difference  in  character/ 


4  THE  LITERATURE  OF  FACT 

and  a  difference  in  the  tardiness  with  which  that  movement 
proceeded  to  its  results  in  the  northern  country.  In  Italy 
the  Renaissance  had  been  for  the  most  part  unmoral,  and  the 
highest  aesthetic  perception  and  scholarly  tastes  had  often 
existed  in  men  whose  lives  were  marked  by  moral  obliquity 
and  blackened  with  crime.  There  the  pleasures  of  the  world's 
newly  stirred  curiosity  were  largely  the  virtuoso's  delight  in 
profane  learning.  When  this  reached  deeper,  it  stimulated 
the  frank  philosophical  cynicism  of  Macchiavelli's  Prince,  or 
raised  ideals  of  the  perfect  man  living  in  society  as  depicted 
in  The  Courtier.  In  Italy,  the  new  world  which  the  study  of 
the  ancients  had  opened  to  the  spirit  of  man  reacted  imme- 
diately and  mainly  on  literature,  art,  and  society.  In  England, 
on  the  contrary,  the  new  learning,  as  it  was  there  called,  took 
on  from  the  first  a  more  practical  and  a  more  ethical  turn 
The  attitude  of  such  men  as  Erasmus,  Sir  Thomas  More, 
and  those  who  brought  the  study  of  Greek  to  England  was 
notable  for  its  moral  tone.  The  new  knowledge  was  to  be 
studied  as  a  means  to  the  better  understanding  of  man  in  his 
relations  to  man  and  in  his  obligations  to  God.  This  was 
wide  of  the  virtuoso's  pleasures  in  the  beauties  of  ancient 
classical  art  and  the  niceties  of  ancient  classical  learning; 
and  hence  it  was  a  long  time  in  England  before  the  spirit  of 
the  new  learning  was  felt  to  the  full  in  works  of  art.  In  a 
word,  although  the  bud  was  swelling  and  ready  to  burst  about 
''  the  time  that  Shakespeare  was  born,  the  flower  of  the  Renais- 
sance came  into  bloom  only  after  Queen  Elizabeth  had  been 
on  her  throne  for  a  generation.  The  poetical  activities  of 
Sidney  and  of  Spenser  begin,  at  earliest,  in  the  late  seventies, 
and  Lyly's  Euphues  appeared  in  1579.  It  is  doubtful  if 
Marlowe,  much  less  Shakespeare,  wrote  anything  permanent 
before  1586;  and  Hooker  and  Bacon  first  emerge  from  con- 
troversy into  authorship  in  the  nineties.  It  is  true  that  certain 
qualities  which  came  to  distinguish  Elizabethan  poetry  are 
discoverable  in  Wyatt  and  Surrey,  both  of  whom  died  while 
Henry  VIII  was  yet  reigning,  and  it  is  equally  certain  that 
men  like  Roger  Ascham,  the  famous  tutor  to  the  children  of 
that  sovereign,  and  Latimer,  one  of  the  most  eloquently  out- 


TUDOR   HISTORICAL   LITERATURE  5 

spoken  of  Henry's  preachers,  presaged,  in  form  as  well  as  in 
matter,  certain  abiding  characteristics  of  EHzabethan  prose. 
Nevertheless,  it  is  the  fruit  and  not  the  flower  of  promise  that 
we  gather  in  the  harvest;  and  little  has  the  student  of  English 
poetry  or  English  prose  to  lose  (if  we  except  some  half-dozen 
books,  all  of  them  already  mentioned),  who  begins  his  study 
of  Elizabethan  literature  with  the  works  which  appeared,  in 
print  at  least,  at  a  time  subsequent  to  the  birth  of  Shakespeare. 

It  is  a  commonplace  of  English  history  that  the  vigilant 
and  centralized  monarchy  of  Henry  VII  fostered  in  English- 
men a  sense  ojCnationality  to  which  they  had  become  almost 
complete  strangers  during  the  long  feuds  of  the  Wars  of  the 
Roses.  The  national  consciousness,  once  reawakened,  waxed 
strong  in  the  earlier  days  of  Henry  VIII;  and,  though  sub- 
mitted to  a  terrible  ordeal  in  the  political  and  religious  per- 
secutions that  followed,  answered  with  enthusiasm  the  appeals 
of  Elizabeth  to  patriotism  and  rested  firm  in  its  appreciation 
of  her  good  government  at  home  and  her  success  in  foreign 
politics.  Literature  responded  at  once  to  this  awakened 
national  spirit  in  a  renewed  interest  in  the  past  evinced  in  the 
translation  and  republication,  for  example,  of  such  history  as 
Ralph  Higden's  Polychronicon  and  in  a  revival  of  the  popu- 
larity of  works  like  Lydgate's  Falls  of  Princes  and  Malory's 
Morte  Darthur  in  which  the  historical  instinct  vies  with  the 
love  of  romance.  A  little  later  came  the  heyday  of  the  Eng- 
lish chronicle  history  which  flourished  in  prose,  in  verse,  at 
large  and  in  epitome,  in  collections  and  in  separate  tracts, 
poems,  and  dramas.  Sidney  died  too  early  to  have  felt  to  the 
full  the  literary  reflex  of  this  revival  of  national  spirit.  But 
it  was  this  spirit  no  less  than  the  love  of  poetry  which  inspired 
a  fam.iliar  passage  of  The  Defense  of  Poesy,  which  quotation 
can  never  stale:  "Certainly  I  must  confess  my  own  barbar- 
ousness,  I  never  heard  the  old  song  of  Percy  and  Douglas 
that  I  found  not  my  heart  moved  more  than  with  a  trumpet: 
and  yet  is  it  sung  but  by  some  blind  crouder  with  no  rougher 
voice  than  rude  style." 

The  amount  and  variety  of  the  literature  of  the  sixteenth 
century  which  took  English  historical  and  legendary  themes 


6  THE  LITERATURE  OF  FACT 

for  its  subject-matter  are  things  commonly  forgotten.  This 
literature  began  towards  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Henry  VHI 
with  Grafton's  printing  and  continuation  of  the  metrical 
chronicle  of  Hardyng  and  his  edition  of  Hall.  In  the  two 
succeeding  reigns  such  books  were  discouraged;  Gardiner 
even  discerned  concealed  heresy  in  the  political  examples  of 
The  Mirror  for  Magistrates,  and  the  projected  publication  of 
that  work,  in  1555,  was  stayed.  On  the  accession  of  Eliza- 
beth the  publication  of  historical  literature  began  anew  with 
a  third  edition  of  the  Chronicle  of  Fabyan.  In  1563  Grafton 
brought  out  An  Abridgment  of  the  C hroncjcles  of  England 
which  attained  a  fourth  edition  in  1572.  He  was  rivaled  in 
this  undertaking  by  John  Stow  in  1565  with  A  Summary  of 
English  Chronicles  which  ran  through  ten  editions  up  to  1604 
and  was  the  accepted  short  history  of  England  of  its  day. 
Before  a  decade  had  elapsed  John  Foxe's  Acts  and  Monuments, 
first  published  in  1563  and  popularly  known  as  The  Book  of 
Martyrs,  had  gone  into  a  second  edition;  Grafton  had  abridged 
his  Abridgment  which  still  stretched,  however,  "from  the 
creation  of  the  world  to  the  year  1566,"  and  extended  it  into 
his  Chronicle  at  Large  and  Mere  History  of  the  Affairs  of 
England  and  the  Kings  of  the  Same,  1569;  while  Stow,  in 
association  with  Bishop  Parker,  brought  to  the  press  three 
earlier  Latin  chroniclers,  Matthew  of  Westminster,  Matthew 
of  Paris,  and  Thomas  of  Walsingham,  and  was  busily  at  work 
in  gathering  materials  for  his  Chronicles  of  England,  1580, 
and  his  Annals,  first  printed  in  1592.  In  1577  was  pub- 
lished the  most  important  of  Elizabethan  prose  histories, 
The  Chronicles  of  England,  Scotland  and  Ireland,  by  Ralph 
Holinshed,  a  second  edition  appearing  under  the  title, 
Chronicles  of  England  from  William  the  Conqueror,  in  1587. 
To  this  enumeration  of  chronicles  may  be  added  the  scattered 
biographies  of  historical  personages  from  The  Life  of  Cardinal 
fVolsey  by  Cavendish,  written  in  the  reign  of  Mary,  and  Sir 
John  Hayward's  several  lives  of  English  kings,  to  Bacon's 
Life  of  Henry  VH,  dating  late  in  the  reign  of  King  James. 

Nor  was  the  prevalent  interest  in  English  history  less  not- 
Uble  among  the  poets  whose  flights,  if  by  no  means  so  sustained 


"THE  MIRROR  FOR  MAGISTRATES"  7 

as  those  of  the  chroniclers,  were  far  more  frequent.  The  Mir- 
ror for  Magistrates  was  one  of  the  earliest  fruits  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan press.  It  is  commonly  spoken  of  as  projected  by  Sir 
Thomas  Sackville,  one  of  the  authors  of  GorboJuc,  though  he 
was  really  no  more  than  the  contributor  of  the  one  "legend," 
that  of  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  which  reached  a  real  poetic 
level  on  a  plane  of  mediocrity.  The  work  was  originally  under- 
taken in  consequence  of  the  revived  popularity  of  Lydgate's 
Falls  of  Princes.  This  origin  gives  to  The  Mirror  for  Magis- 
trates a  medievalism  of  tone  which  is  enhanced  by  the  sameness 
of  mood,  the  moralizing,  the  somewhat  old-fashioned  versi- 
fication of  the  majority  of  the  "legends,"  and  their  connection 
by  an  artificial  thread.  The  Mirror  was  a  growth  and  accre- 
tion. The  nineteen  "legends"  which  constitute  the  first 
edition,  that  of  1559,  are  the  work  of  six  writers,  of  whom 
William  Baldwin  is  the  chief.  They  concern  events  from  the 
days  of  the  two  Roger  Mortimers  and  Thomas  of  Woodstock 
(1329-1392)  to  the  tragedy  of  George,  Duke  of  Clarence 
(1478).  The  second  edition,  1563,  reprinted  these  "leg- 
ends," and  added  eight  more  by  several  authors,  three  of  whom 
had  already  contributed  to  the  first.  Nearly  all  these  "le- 
gends" concern  personages  of  the  time  of  Richard  III.  In 
1574,  John  Higgins  added  seventeen  "legends"  of  mythical 
and  Roman  Britain;  and,  as  they  preceded  the  other  stories 
in  point  of  time,  called  the  new  book  The  First  Part  of  the 
Mirror  for  Magistrates.  Four  years  later  a  rival  continuation 
called  The  Second  Part  of  the  Mirror  for  Magistrates  "con- 
taining the  Fall  of  the  unfortunate  Princes  of  this  Land  from 
the  Conquest  of  Caesar  unto  the  coming  of  Duke  William  the 
Conqueror"  was  published,  the  work  of  Thomas  Blenner- 
hasset,  Baldwin's  work  thus  becoming  the  third  part.  Blen- 
nerhasset's  collection  contains  twelve  "legends."  In  1587 
Higgins  added  to  his  "first  part"  no  less  than  twenty-three 
stories,  into  which  several  Roman  emperors  intrude  with  a 
few  further  tales  of  modern  personages  by  Churchyard  and 
others.  The  last  edition  of  The  Mirror,  1610,  picks  and 
chooses  from  the  earlier  ones  and  adds  eleven  "legends,"  one 
by  Drayton,  the  rest  by  the  editor,  Richard  Niccols.     We  have 


8  THE   LITERATURE   OF   FACT 

thus  a  corpus  of  nearly  a  hundred  "legends"  varying  in  length 
from  fifty  to  four  hundred  lines  each,  the  work  of  some  fifteen 
authors,  extending  over  a  period  of  fifty  years  and  appearing 
in  eight  issues.  We  shall  defer  inquiring  into  the  historical 
epics  of  Daniel,  Drayton,  and  Warner  to  a  later  place  in  this 
book.  All  were  of  this  general  type.  This  impetus  towards 
historical  writing  continued  far  into  the  reign  of  King  James; 
although  it  was  in  the  more  patriotic  times  of  Elizabeth  that 
it  reached  its  height  and  begot  in  the  English  drama  that  pecu- 
liarly typical  and  effective  group  of  plays  which  is  known  as 
the  English  chronicle  histories.^ 

Turning  more  specifically  to  the  early  prose  chronicles, 
t  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  learned  in  Tudor  days  still 
looked  askant  upon  any  work  of  a  solid  nature  written  in  the 
vernacular  prose.  The  sanction  of  centuries  of  scholarship 
demanded  the  use  of  the  learned  tongue,  and  when  men  came 
to  cast  their  thoughts  into  English,  it  was  with  apologies  for 
such  a  departure  from  custom  and  wont.  For  example  it  is 
thus  that  the  learned  Ascham  writes  in  1545: 

And  although  to  have  written  this  book  either  in  Latin  or  Greek 
had  been  more  easier  and  fit  for  my  trade  in  stud)',  yet  nevertheless, 
I  supposing  it  no  point  of  honesty,  that  my  commodity  should  stop 
and  hinder  any  part  either  of  the  pleasure  or  profit  of  many,  have 
written  this  English  matter  in  the  Enghsh  tongue  for  English  men. 

Elsewhere  Ascham  makes  clear  the  condition  of  the  time: 

And  as  for  the  Latin  or  Greek  tongue,  everything  is  so  excellently 
done  in  them,  that  none  can  do  better.  In  the  English  tongue,  con- 
trary, everything  in  a  manner  so  meanly,  both  for  the  matter  and 
handling,  that  no  man  can  do  worse.  For  therein  the  least  learned 
for  the  most  part,  have  been  always  most  ready  to  write.  And  they 
which  had  least  hope  in  Latin,  have  been  most  bold  in  English;  when 
surely  every  man  that  is  most  ready  to  talk,  is  not  most  able  to  write. 

These  passages  of  Ascham  present  by  no  means  the  biased 
and  prejudiced  opinion  of  a  scholar  who  failed  to  appreciate 
the  work  of  his  own  age  in  dwelling  in  the  past.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  few  of  the  familiar  books  of  the  modern  world  were 

*  The  foregoing  three  paragraphs  are  repeated  in  part  from  the 
author's  English  Chronicle  Play,  1902. 


LATIN  EXAMPLE  AND   ENGLISH   PROSE       9 

in  existence  when  Ascham  wrote.  As  Macaulay  put  it:  "In 
the  time  of  Henry  VIII  and  Edward  VI,  a  person  who  did  not 
read  Greek  and  Latin  could  read  nothing,  or  next  to  nothing. 
The  ItaHan  was  the  only  modern  language  which  possessed 
anything  that  could  be  called  a  literature.  All  the  valuable 
books  then  extant  in  all  the  vernacular  dialects  of  Europe 
would  hardly  have  filled  a  single  shelf.  England  did  not  yet 
possess  Shakespeare's  plays  and  The  Faery  Queen,  nor  France 
Montaigne's  Essays,  nor  Spain  Don  Quixote;  ....  Chau- 
cer, Gower,  Froissart,  Comines,  Rabelais  nearly  complete  the 
list." 

It  was  in  the  nature  of  things,  then,  that  books  so  thor- 
oughly national  as  those  which  discoursed  of  English  deeds 
and  English  heroes  should  be  cast  in  the  English  mold.     Sir 
Thomas  More  might  write  in  Latin  of  his  imaginary  common- 
wealth in  Utopia,  or  Bacon,  much  later,  shudder  to  trust  his 
weighty  philosophical  cargo  in  the  same  vessel  with  The  Faery 
Queen  or  Hamlet;    but  when  it  came  to  the  glorification  of 
English   deeds   and   English  kings,  the   English  tongue  was  1 
clearly  the  only  fitting  medium.     We  may  thus  aflfirm  that  • 
this  outburst  of  historical  and  kindred  writing  had  much  to  do  | 
with  the  development  of  English  vernacular  prose,  and  in  con-  * 
firming  thoughtful  men  to  a  preference  for  their  own  tongue   i 
over  outworn  and  medieval  Latin. 

Once   more,   nearly  all   early  Elizabethan   English   prose     M^v 
moved  in  the  leading-strings  of  Latin.     "It  had   been  more    ^ 
easier  and  fit  for  my  trade  in  study,"  says  Ascham  once  more, 
"to  have  written  this  book  either  in  Latin  or  Greek";  and 
when  that  excellent  old  teacher  discourses  of  pedagogy  his 
thoughts  are  riveted  on  the  study  of  the  classics.     To  write 
good  prose  was  then  to  emulate  Cicero;   to  write  good  English 
was  to  transfer  Latin  terms  and  Latin  constructions  to  the 
modern  tongue.     To  the  present  day  we  recognize  a  difference 
between  the  formality  of  the   bookish  tongue  and  everyday 
colloquial  speech.     And  that  difference  arose  out  of  the  Latin; 
foundations    of  English    style.     Until    recently   grammarians  \ 
of  English  used  an  antiquated  Latin  desk  full  of  pigeon-holes, 
if  it  may  so  be  put,  elaborately  constructed  to  contain,  each 


10  THE   LITERATURE  OF   FACT 

in  its  place,  the  many  rules  of  Latin  grammar.  True,  it  might 
be  difficult  to  find  English  material  to  fill  all  these  compart- 
ments allotted  to  rules  and  exceptions.  But  for  what  was 
language  given  us,  if  not  that  the  grammarians  might  wreak 
their  ingenuity  upon  it  ?  And  so  our  tongue  was  contorted  and 
analyzed,  distinguished  and  subtilized  until  nearly  every 
pigeon-hole  in  the  Latin  desk  was  filled.  Here,  again,  was  a 
recognition  of  the  effect  of  Latin  on  English.  But  it  is  to  be 
most  carefully  observed  that,  though  often  devout  almost  to 
slavishness  in  the  worship  of  classical  models,  the  writers  of 
Elizabeth's  day  recognized  to  the  full  —  as  some  others  have 
not  —  that  to  confuse  the  vocabularies  of  two  tongues  is  to 
<.  write  in  neither.  The  Latinism  of  the  Elizabethans  is  a  Lat- 
('  inism  of  construction,  not  a  Latinism  of  vocabulary.  They 
could  write  "without  all  question"  (sine  omni  duhitatione), 
speak  of  "the  ill"  (mali)  for  bad  men,  or  say,  like  Milton, 

He,  after  Eve  seduced,  unminded  shrunk 

Into  the  wood  fast  by; 
but  it  was  reserved  for  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  a  subject  of 
Charles  II,  to  write  "Embrace  not  the  opacous  and  blind  side 
of  opinions,  but  that  which  looks  most  luciferously  or  influen- 
tial! y  unto  goodness";  and  for  Dr.  Samuel  Johnson,  a  subject 
of  the  Georges,  to  define,  for  simplicity's  sake,  a  fit  as  "a 
paroxysm  or  exacerbation  of  any  intermittent  distemper." 

By  far  the  most  interesting  of  the  prose  chronicles  of  Eng- 
land, enumerated  above,  is  that  of  Holinshed;  for  aside  from 
the  importance  and  excellence  of  this  work,  it  was  to  this  book 
1  that  Shakespeare  turned  most  frequently  for  the  material  of 
his  chronicle  plays.  Ralph,  or  Raphael,  Holinshed  is  first 
met  early  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  as  a  translator  or  utility 
writer  in  the  printing  office  of  one  Reginald  Wolfe.  Wolfe 
seems  to  have  been  a  man  of  ambition  and  ideas.  He  had 
designed  a  universal  history  and  a  cosmography  which  was 
to  include  elaborate  illustrations  and  maps.  He  had  inherited 
the  notes  of  the  indefatigable  librarian  and  antiquary  of  Henry 
VIII,  John  Leland,  who  in  his  peregrinations  claimed  to  have 
visited  "almost  every  bay,  river,  lake,  mountain,  valley,  moor, 
heath,  wood,  city,  castle,  manor  house  and  college  in  the  land," 


HARRISON'S   "DESCRIPTION  OF  ENGLAND"  ii 

who  sought  to  collect  manuscripts  from  the  dismantled  mon- 
asteries for  the  king's  library,  and  who  sedulously  hived  in- 
formation and  antiquarian,  topographical,  and  literary  material 
for  more  than  thirty  years.  But  "after  five  and  twenty  year 
travail  spent  therein,"  Wolfe  died,  and  his  successors,  alarmed 
at  the  impracticable  magnitude  of  his  undertaking,  reduced 
his  plan  to  a  history  and  description  of  the  British  Islands. 

Holinshed  continued  in  their  employ,  and  became  respon- 
sible for  the  greater  part  of  the  work.  But  others,  likewise, 
were  associated  in  it:  among  them  William  Harrison,  at  that 
time  chaplain  to  Lord  Cobham,  Edmund  Campion,  the  not- 
able Jesuit  missionary  and  martyr,  and  Richard  Stanihurst, 
an  eccentric  Irish  scholar  and  translator  of  Vergil.  Stanihurst 
contributed  the  greater  part  of  the  histor}'  of  his  own  country, 
adapting  it  chiefly  from  Giraldus  Cambrensis.  Holinshed 
was  assisted  likewise  in  that  part  of  his  work  which  dealt  with 
Scotland;  and  his  sources  here  were  chiefly  the  histories  of 
Hector  Boece  and  John  Major.  It  is  to  Harrison  that  we  owe 
the  delightful  prefatory  Description  of  England,  the  founda- 
tion book  of  any  knowledge  at  first  hand  of  tTie  England  of 
Elizabeth.  Several  qualities  conspire  to  give  this  work  its 
permanent  value.  First  of  all,  Harrison  tells  us  what  we  want 
to  know,  from  the  order  of  the  nobility  and  the  constitution 
of  bishoprics  to  the  nature  of  the  houses  people  lived  in,  the 
clothes  they  v/ore,  and  the  hour  at  which  they  dined.  Sec- 
ondly, Harrison's  style  is  ever  direct,  colloquial,  and  racy  in  its 
originality  of  view  and  command  of  idiomatic  English.  Again, 
the  personality  of  Harrison,  which  is  always  present,  is  most 
engaging  in  his  honesty,  outspokenness,  and  sanity  of  attitude. 
The  naivete  of  Harrison's  nature,  too,  is  unceasingly  enter- 
tainins;.  It  was  this  that  caused  him  to  find  nothing  irrelevant 
in  a  digression  as  to  how  he  obtained  tulips  for  his  garden 
from  Holland  or  in  the  circumstantial  details  of  Mrs.  Har- 
rison's brewing  of  March  beer.  Harrison  includes  the  com- 
monplace and  discusses  the  obvious,  and  as  neither  the  com- 
monplace nor  the  obvious  of  the  England  of  his  day  is  such 
to  the  reader  of  the  twentieth  century,  he  contrives  to  give  us 
the  "very  age  and  body  of  the  time,  his  form  and  pressure." 


12  THE   LITERATURE   OF   FACT 

Thus,  in  the  chapter  devoted  to  the  degrees  of  people  in 
the  commonwealth  of  England,  we  are  informed  with  a  search- 
ing insight  into  human  nature  quite  applicable  to  to-day: 

Whosoever  studieth  the  laws  of  the  realm,  whoso  abideth  in  the 
university,  giving  his  mind  unto  his  book,  or  professeth  physic  and 
the  liberal  sciences,  or  beside  his  service  in  the  room  of  a  captain  in 
the  wars,  or  good  counsel  given  at  home,  whereby  this  common- 
wealth is  benefited,  can  live  without  manual  labor,  and  thereto  is 
able  to  bear  the  port,  charge,  and  countenance  of  a  gentleman,  he 
shall  for  money  have  a  coat  and  arms  bestowed  upon  him  by  heralds 
(who  in  the  charter  of  the  same  do  of  custom  pretend  antiquity  and 
service,  and  many  gay  things),  and  thereunto,  being  made  so  good 
cheap,  be  called  master  (which  is  the  title  that  men  give  to  esquires 
and  gentlemen),  and  reputed  for  a  gentleman  ever  after. 

Elsewhere,  affording  more  direct  information,  Harrison 
tells  us: 

With  us  the  nobility,  gentry,  and  students  do  ordinarily  go  to  din- 
ner at  eleven  before  noon,  and  to  supper  at  five,  or  between  five  and 
six  at  afternoon.  The  merchants  dine  and  sup  seldom  before  twelve 
at  noon,  and  six  at  night,  especially  in  London.  The  husbandmen 
dine  also  at  high  noon  as  they  call  it,  and  sup  at  seven  or  eight;  but 
out  of  the  term  in  our  universities  the  scholars  dine  at  ten.  As  for 
the  poorest  sort  they  generally  dine  and  sup  when  they  may,  so  that 
to  talk  of  their  order  of  repast  it  were  but  a  needless  matter. 

To  return  to  Holinshed,  his  part  in  the  Chronicles,  aside 
from  general  supervision,  was  the  compiJing  of  the  history  of 
England  from  the  coming  of  Brute  to  1577-  As  thus  issued, 
Holinshed's  Chronicles  appeared  in  two  large  folio  volumes 
illustrated  with  portraits,  pictures  of  battles,,  and  the  like 
and  enjoyed  an  immediate  success.  Holinshed  died  in  1580, 
and  the  second  edition,  of  1587,  was  edited  by  j^ohn  Hooker 
alias  Vowell  with  the  help  once  more  of  several  co-workers, 
notable  among  them  John  Stow,  author  of  the  'purvey  of 
London.  The  style  of  Holinshed's  Chronicles  is  clear  and 
dignified,  though  little  distinguished  by  the  grace;s.  The 
editors  strove  to  get  at  the  truth  as  they  understood  it,  and 
quoted  an  enormous  array  of  authorities.  Moreover  the 
work  is  patriotic  and  Protestant  to  the  core,  and  abs>olutely 


HOLINSHED'S  "CHRONICLES"  13 

honest  in  its  faiths  and  convictions.  However,  the  Eliza- 
bethan conception  of  history  was  Hmited.  It  knew  nothing 
of  historical  perspective  and  weighed  scarcely  at  all  the  rela- 
tive importance  of  the  events  which  it  detailed.  It  knew  very 
little  of  historical  portraiture,  but  followed  the  caricatures 
which  partisanship  had  created,  and  repeated  the  tales  which 
gossip  had  forged.  Comets  and  pestilence  were  God's  por- 
tents of  his  inter\'ention  in  the  affairs  of  men.  Droughts  and 
tempests,  like  contemporary  murders  and  trials  for  witch- 
craft, were  fit  subjects  for  its  pages  with  the  progresses  of 
kings  and  the  falls  and  misfortunes  of  princes.  Between 
More's  distorted  "biography"  of  Richard  III,  the  enemy  of 
the  House  of  Lancaster,  and  Bacon's  historical  portraiture 
of  the  first  Tudor  Henry,  there  is  little  historical  writing 
approaching  our  modern  ideals  and  conceptions;  for  the 
method  of  annals,  the  facile  and  thoughtless  art  of  the  narrator, 
the  simplicity  of  the  repeater  of  tales  and  rumors,  mark  Hall, 
Holinshed,  and  Stow  alike.  Shakespeare  used  his  materials 
in  Holinshed,  as  elsewhere,  honestly,  even  faithfully;  and  it 
is  always  a  new  surprise  to  turn  from  one  of  his  historical 
pla\s  to  the  corresponding  passages  in  Holinshed  and  realize 
how  close  is  his  following: 

Shortly  after  happened  a  strange  and  uncouth  wonder,  which 
aftenvard  was  the  cause  of  much  trouble  in  the  realm  of  Scotland,  as 
ye  shall  after  hear.  It  fortuned  as  Macbeth  and  Banquo  journied 
towards  Forres,  where  the  king  then  lay,  they  went  sporting  by  the 
way  together  without  other  company,  save  only  themselves,  passing 
through  the  woods  and  fields,  when  suddenly  in  the  midst  of  a  land, 
there  met  them  three  women  in  strange  and  wild  apparel,  resembling 
creatures  of  elder  world,  whom  when  they  attentively  beheld,  wonder- 
ing much  at  the  sight,  the  first  of  them  spake  and  said:  'All  hail, 
Macbeth,  thane  of  Glamis!'  (for  he  had  lately  entered  into  that  dig- 
nity and  office  by  the  death  of  his  father,  Sinell).  The  second  of 
them  said:  'Hail,  Macbeth,  thane  of  Cawdor!'  But  the  third  said: 
'  All  hail,  Macbeth,  that  hereafter  shalt  be  king  of  Scotland ! '    .    .    . 

Herewith  the  aforesaid  women  vanished  immediately  out  of  their 
sight.  This  was  reputed  at  the  first  but  some  vain  fantastical  illusion 
by  Macbeth  and  Banquo,  insomuch  that  Banquo  would  call  Macbeth 
in   jest,  king    of    Scotland.    .    .    .      But    afterwards  the    common 


14  THE   LITERATURE  OF   FACT 

opinion  was,  that  these  women  were  either  the  weird  sisters,  that  is 
(as  ye  would  say)  the  goddesses  of  destiny,  or  else  some  nymphs  or 
fairies,  indued  with  knowledge  of  prophecy  by  their  necromantical 
science,  because  every  thing  came  to  pass  as  they  had  spoken. 

Which  of  us  reading  this  passage  for  the  first  time  could 
fail  to  be  surprised  that  the  words  "the  weird  sisters"  are 
borrowed  thence  by  Shakespeare  ?  Indeed,  considering 
Shakespeare's  employment  of  this  ancient  quarry  and  the 
permanence  of  the  ideas  which  cultivated  men  and  women 
have  derived  from  his  plays,  it  may  be.  questioned  whether 
our  general  conception  of  the  personages  of  earlier  English 
history  have  not  been  derived  more  from  Holinshed  than  from 
any  other  writer.  Prince  Hal,  a  wild  and  roistering  youngster, 
reformed  by  responsibility  into  a  model  sovereign;  Hunch- 
back Richard,  malevolent,  unrepentant,  capable  of  any 
crime;  "Good  Duke  Humphrey";  Margaret,  Queen  of 
Henry  VI,  "the  she  wolf  of  France";  cool,  calculating  Boling- 
broke;  wronged,  pathetic,  and  unhappy  Katharine,  who  does 
not  recognize  these  popular  portraits  ?  And  what  student  of 
history  does  not  know  to  how  large  a  degree  they  are  perver- 
sions of  historical  facts  ? 

Even  more  popular  than  the  Chronicles  was  Foxe's  Book 
of  Martyrs,  printed  again  and  again  betvreen  its  first  appear- 
ance in  1563  and  the  end  of  the  century.  John  Foxe  had 
studied  at  Oxford  and  resigned  his  fellowship  at  Magdalen 
in  1545  in  consequence  of  his  Protestant  convictions.  There- 
after he  lived  much  abroad,  but  returned  to  England  on  the 
accession  of  Elizabeth  and  died,  in  1587,  a  prebend  at  Salis- 
bury. He  appears  to  have  sacrificed  preferment  in  the  church 
to  conscientious  scruples  as  to  surplices  and  ceremonials;  and 
it  is  to  his  credit  that  he  plead,  though  in  vain,  that  mercy 
might  be  accorded  the  much  persecuted  Anabaptists.  The 
portentous  title  of  Foxe's  remarkable  work  reads:  "Acts 
and  Monuments  of  these  latter  and  perilous  days,  touching 
matters  of  the  Church,  wherein  are  comprehended  and  de- 
scribed the  great  persecutions  and  horrible  troubles  that  have 
been  wrought  and  practised  by  the  Romish  Prelates,  espe- 
cially in  this  Realm  of  England  and  Scotland,  from  the  year 


FOXE'S   "BOOK  OF  MARTYRS"  15 

of  our  Lord,  a  thousand  unto  the  time  now  present."  It  was 
later  augmented,  first  by  Foxe  and  then  by  others,  to  include 
"a  universal  history  of  the  church"  at  least  so  far  as  it  con- 
cerned Christian  martyrdom.  A  late  edition  of  Foxe  (1804) 
contains  2123  large  pages  in  double  columns  of  rather  small 
print,  in  three  volumes,  which  it  is  an  effort  for  any  but  an 
athlete  to  wield.  Foxe's  book  received  the  sanction  of  the 
bishops,  and  an  order  of  the  Anglican  Convocation  of  1571 
"placed  it  in  the  hall  of  every  bishop  in  England."  In  Pro- 
testant households  of  standing  it  lay  ever  at  hand  for  the  old  to 
ponder  and  for  the  young  to  devour.  Foxe  is  vivid,  pictur- 
esque and  circumstantial.  He  had  a  thesis  to  defend  for  the 
illustration  of  which  the  unchristian  conduct  of  Christian  men 
in  all  ages  afforded  him  only  too  many  terrible  examples. 
His  work  is  a  huge  party  pamphlet  and  is  often  distorted, 
unhistorical,  and  unfair.  But  it  was  not  more  distorted  or 
unfair  than  were  the  works  which  attacked  it;  and  its  stanch 
patriotism  and  Protestantism,  albeit  the  latter  was  fanatical, 
wrought  wonders  in  knitting  Englishmen  together  to  repel 
alike  the  invasion  of  Spain  and  the  more  insidious  efforts  of  the 
Jesuits*  missions  to  reclaim  Protestant  England  to  the  mother 
faith  of  Rome. 

There  remains  a  kindred  topic.  If  Englishmen  in  their 
re-awakened  national  consciousness  "joyed  to  read  the  doings 
of  brave  Talbot  against  the  French"  and  the  martial  deeds  of 
Edward  against  the  Bruce  or  Percy  against  Douglas,  no  less 
intense  was  their  interest  in  their  present  world,  in  the  ad- 
venturous spirit  that  animated  Drake  to  compass  the  globe 
or  Essex  to  "singe  the  beard  of  the  Spanish  king"  at  Cadiz. 
Martin  Frobisher  and  Sir  Francis  Drake,  Sir  John  Hawkins 
and  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  what  heart  of  English  speaking 
man  but  warms  at  the  mention  of  these  valiant  sea  dogs,  "old 
England's  ever  memorable  worthies,"  their  daring  on  many 
seas,  their  buccaneering,  their  grasp  after  Spanish  gold,  their 
trust  in  God  and  in  England!  Richard  Hakluyt  —  or  Hackle- 
wit,  which  attests  his  English  origin  —  was  a  man  of  one  idea, 
and  that  was  geography  and  the  history  of  discovery.  He 
tells  us  that  while  a  student  at  Oxford,  "I  read  whatever 


i6  THE  LITERATURE  OF  FACT 

printed  or  written  discoveries  and  voyages  I  found  extant, 
either  in  Greek,  Latin,  Italian,  Spanish,  Portugal,  French  or 
English  languages."  Later  he  became  a  lecturer  on  cos- 
mography and  wzs  among  the  first  to  show  "the  new  lately 
reformed  maps,  globes,  spheres  and  other  instruments  of  this 
art,  for  demonstration  in  the  public  schools."  In  1582 
Hakluyt  published  his  first  work,  Divers  Foyages  touching 
the  Discovery  of  America,  and  he  continued  almost  to  the  date 
of  his  death,  in  the  same  year  with  Shakespeare,  an  unwearied 
collector  and  investigator  in  the  field  of  his  choice.  Like 
Harrison,  Hakluyt  was  a  clergyman  and  his  various  livings 
and  preferments  gave  him  the  means  and  the  leisure  to  prose- 
cute his  favorite  work.  Hakluyt's  most  noteworthy  under- 
taking was  The  Principal  Navigations,  Voyages  and  Dis- 
coveries of  the  English  Nation  "made  by  sea  or  overland  to 
the  remote  and  farthest  distant  quarters  of  the  earth  at  any 
time  within  the  compass  of  these  1500  years,  1589."  The 
range  of  this  work  is  extraordinary  and  the  zeal  with  which 
the  editor  labored,  collecting,  translating,  and  adapting  every 
account  of  a  voyage  on  which  he  could  lay  hands  is  altogether 
unparalleled.  The  slave  trade  of  Sir  John  Hawkins  and  his 
barter  and  buccaneering  among  the  Spaniards  of  the  West 
Indies;  Sir  Francis  Drake  and  his  amazing  success  in  rifling 
unprotected  Peru,  with  his  circumnavigation  of  the  globe  to 
escape  reprisal;  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert's  search  after  gold 
and  the  northwest  passage,  and  the  heroic  death  that  he  found 
at  sea :  such  are  some  of  the  themes  of  this  prose  laureate  of 
England's  earliest  geographical  expansion.  Variously  en 
larged  and  rewritten  as  it  was  in  later  editions,  Hakluyt's  Prin- 
cipal Navigations  constitutes  a  marvelous  and  exceedingly 
circumstantial  piece  of  evidence  of  the  astonishing  activity 
that  preceded  the  laying  of  those  foundations  on  which  the 
future  empire  of  England  beyond  the  seas  was  to  rest.  While 
at  first  curiosity,  and  then  patriotism,  seem  to  have  called 
Hakluyt  to  his  task,  he  displays  a  consistent  interest  in  the 
growth  of  trade  and  in  the  economic  aspects  of  his  subject, 
as  we  should  call  them  to-day;  and  again  and  again  we  meet 
with  him  in  the  counsels  of  the  newly  founded  East  India 


HAKLUYT  AND  HIS  SUCCESSORS  17 

Company  or  in  projects  and  petitions  promoting  colonization 
in  Virginia  and  elsewhere.  Hakluyt  belongs  to  other  fields 
than  those  of  literature  and  yet  the  dead  level  of  his  utilitarian 
prose  is  not  unbroken  at  times  with  a  smack  of  the  larger 
utterance  of  his  age. 

Hakluyt  was  only  the  greatest  of  his  class,  like  Holinshed 
among  the  chroniclers.  Hakluyt's  avowed  successor  was 
Samuel  Purchase  (1577-1626),  a  Cambridge  man,  parson  of 
St.  Martin's  Ludgate.  Purchase  his  Pilgrims,  as  he  called 
his  collection  of  voyages,  was  published  in  1625  and  is  a  work 
decidedly  below  that  of  Hakluyt  in  style,  arrangement,  and 
editorial  judgment.  In  an  earlier  work  of  Purchase,  en- 
titled his  Pilgrimage,  he  had  put  together  a  species  of  gazetteer 
of  previous  English  voyages  of  discovery.  Besides  these 
greater  works,  many  lesser  pamphlets  attest  English  adven- 
tures on  the  sea  and  in  strange  lands.  The  Last  Fight  of  the 
Revenge y  described  by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  in  1591,  is  cast  in 
remarkably  vivid  and  honest  prose,  and  may  be  taken  as 
typical  of  the  epic  height  which  this  literature  of  fact  attained 
at  times  in  the  hands  of  greater  writers.  The  Revenge,  single 
handed,  had  fought  fifteen  Spanish  ships  of  war  for  fifteen 
hours: 

All  the  powder  of  the  Revenge  to  the  last  barrel  was  now  spent, 
all  her  pikes  broken,  forty  of  her  best  men  slain,  and  the  most  part  of 
the  rest  hurt.  In  the  beginning  of  the  fight  she  had  but  one  hundred 
free  from  sickness,  and  four  score  and  ten  sick,  laid  in  hold  upon  the 
ballast.  A  small  troop  to  man  such  a  ship,  and  a  weak  garrison  to 
resist  so  mighty  an  army.  By  those  hundred  all  was  sustained,  the 
volleys,  boardings,  and  enterings  of  fifteen  ships  of  war,  besides  those 
which  beat  her  at  large.  On  the  contrary,  the  Spanish  were  always 
supplied  with  soldiers  brought  from  every  squadron:  all  manner  of 
arms  and  powder  at  will.  Unto  ours  there  remained  no  comfort  at 
all,  no  hope,  no  supply  either  of  ships,  men,  or  weapons;  the  masts  all 
beaten  overboard,  all  her  tackle  cut  asunder,  her  upper  work  altogether 
rased,  and  in  effect  evened  she  was  with  the  water,  but  the  very  foun- 
dation or  bottom  of  a  ship,  nothing  being  left  overhead  either  for 
flight  or  defense.  Sir  Richard  finding  himself  in  this  distress,  and 
unable  any  longer  to  make  resistance,  ....  commanded  the 
master  gunner,  whom  he  knew  to  be  a  most  resolute  man,  to  split  and 


i8  THE  LITERATURE  OF  FACT 

sink  the  ship;  that  thereby  nothing  might  remain  of  glory  or  victory 
to  the  Spaniards. 

It  was  then  that  the  Spanish  admiral  offered  honorable 
ransom  and  a  return  to  England  for  all;  for  he  admired  the 
desperate  courage  of  his  foes.  At  last  Sir  Richard,  who  was 
sorely  wounded,  was  conveyed  aboard  the  admiral's  ship. 
From  a  Dutch  writer,  who  had  at  first  hand  the  Spanish 
report  of  this  encounter,  we  learn  that,  on  the  Spanish  gal- 
leon after  the  fight,  and  wounded  among  his  enemies,  Sir 
Richard  "would  carouse  three  or  four  glasses  of  wine  and  in 
a  bravery  take  the  glasses  between  his  teeth  and  crush  them 
in  pieces  and  swallow  them  down."  He  was  dying,  and  he 
longed  for  death.  When  the  supreme  moment  came  "he 
spake  these  words" : 

Here  die  I,  Richard  Grenville,  with  a  joyful  and  quiet  mind,  for 
that  I  have  ended  my  life  as  a  true  soldier  ought  to  do,  that  hath  fought 
for  his  country,  queen,  religion,  and  honor,  whereby  my  soul  most 
joyfully  departeth  out  of  this  body,  and  shall  always  leave  behind  it 
an  everlasting  fame  of  a  valiant  and  true  soldier  that  hath  done  his 
duty  as  he  was  bound  to  do. 

Into  the  corresponding  works  of  the  poets  we  can  not 
enter  here.  They  were  more  imaginative  and  reconstructive, 
and  therefore  less  true  to  the  actualities  of  stirring  Elizabethan 
life.  The  true  epic  of  such  an  age  of  action  must  be  close  to 
the  deeds  it  depicts,  though  this  represents  but  one  phase  of 
multiform  Elizabethan  life.  We  shall  meet  with  higher 
ideals  than  these  which  are  tethered  to  fact  and  national  wel- 
fare, but  we  shall  meet  with  no  truer  exponents  of  the  material 
side  of  the  national  spirit  that  made  modern  England  than 
Holinshed's  chronicles  of  the  political  and  social  past  of  the 
nation,  than  Foxe's  affirmation  and  justification  of  the 
Protestant  position,  or  Hakluyt's  thousand  and  one  tales  of 
the  distant  gropings  and  graspings  after  empire  that  laid 
the  beginnings  of  greater  Britain  and  her  dominion  over  the 
sea. 


CHAPTER   II 
LITERATURE  OF  THE  COTERIE 

THE  medieval  conception  of  the  true  gentleman  excluded 
books,  and  culture  by  means  of  books.  "When 
amongst  knights  or  gentlemen,"  says  Guevara,  "talk  is  of 
arms,  a  gentleman  ought  to  have  great  shame  to  say,  that  he 
read  it,  but  rather  that  he  saw  it.  For  it  is  very  convenient 
for  the  philosopher  to  recount  what  he  hath  read,  but  the 
knight  or  gentleman  it  becomes  to  speak  of  things  that  he 
hath  done."  The  gentleman  of  the  Renaissance  added  to 
the  medieval  virtues,  which  were  prowess  in  war  and  wisdom 
at  the  council  table,  the  new  qualities  of  a  love  of  learning  and 
a  taste  and  knowledge  in  the  arts.  The  large  and  diverse 
interests  of  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  the  mirror  and  pattern  of  the 
Elizabethan  gentleman,  included  athletic  address  on  the 
tilting  field,  the  theory  and  practice  of  war,  the  training  of 
the  courtier  and  the  diplomat,  a  deep  seated  veneration  for 
the  classics,  and  the  modern  man's  acquaintance  with  his  own 
and  foreign  modern  literatures.  To  Sidney  were  dedicated, 
among  many  other  books,  Spenser's  Shepherds'  Calendar, 
the  first  edition  of  Hakluyt's  Voyages,  and  philosophical 
writings  of  the  Italian  skeptic  and  philosopher,  Giordano 
Bruno;  for  Sidney  was  equally  interested  in  the  future  of 
English  letters  and  of  English  colonial  empire  beyond  the  seas, 
in  the  introduction  of  foreign  meters  to  beautify  English  poetry, 
and  in  the  preservation  of  the  balance  of  Protestant  power 
against  the  intrigues  and  encroachments  of  Philip  of  Spain. 
In  that  beautiful  book.  The  Courtier  of  Baldassare  Castig- 
lione,  we  have  an  engaging  picture  of  the  little  court  of  Urbino 
in  the  early  years  of  the  sixteenth  century.  There  the  graces 
of  conduct  and  the  virtues  of  kindliness  abounded;  and  a 
sweet  and  unaffected  converse,  combined  with  innocent  merri- 
ment, all  presided  over  by  the  grave  but  courteous    duchess 

19 


20  LITERATURE  OF  THE   COTERIE 

of  that  state.  This  circle  was  doubtless  not  so  brilliant  as 
the  notable  assembly  which  met  in  Florence  at  the  fiat  of 
Lorenzo  the  Magnificent,  where  Pulci,  Ficino,  Pico,  and 
Poliziano  discoursed  learnedly  and  eloquently  of  state,  art, 
literature,  and  philosophy.  But  at  Urbino  there  was  a  comity 
of  spirit,  a  "sweet  conversation  that  is  occasioned  of  an  amiable 
and  loving  company";  and  while  we  may  recognize  in  its 
externals  traces  of  that  worldliness,  lightness,  and  vanity  which 
rise  to  the  surface  like  froth  in  any  current  of  social  life,  it 
held  before  it  wholesome  and  gracious  ideals,  honoring  gentle- 
ness and  delicacy  in  man  no  less  than  in  woman  and  offering 
a  conclusive  refutation  to  the  charge  that  the  Italy  of  the 
Renaissance  was  hopelessly  abandoned  and  corrupt.  A 
similar  court  was  that  of  Margaret  of  Navarre,  patroness  of 
poets  and  lover  of  literature,  Platonism,  and  the  amenities  of 
gentle  social  life.  Without  here  anticipating,  it  is  clear  that 
the  Sidneian  circle  of  the  Countess  of  Pembroke,  that  was  to 
come,  was  not  without  its  precedent  in  foreign  lands. 

Modern  English  poetry  found  its  earliest  cultivation  in 
the  select  circles  of  the  court.  The  old  sacred  drama,  orisinat- 
ing  in  the  church,  had  come  out  into  the  public  places  of  the 
market  towns;  it  flourished  in  York,  Chester,  Coventry,  and 
was  popular  and  provincial.  So,  too,  the  ballad,  that  truest 
example  of  folk-poetry,  was  tied  neither  to  place  nor  to  poet, 
but  was  an  utterance  of  the  people  at  large.  On  the  other 
hand,  Chaucer  was  a  poet  of  London  and  the  court;  Gower,  a 
wealthy  gentleman  of  Kent,  attendant  on  his  king,  and  learned 
and  dull  in  three  languages;  while  the  best  of  the  Scotch 
Chaucerians,  from  King  James  to  Dunbar,  were  either  royal 
or  in  the  royal  service.  So  when  English  poetry  revived  to 
shake  off  the  traditions  of  medievalism,  the  first  awakening 
was  at  court.  Henry  VIII  was  an  accomplished  and  affable 
young  man,  a  lover  of  the  arts,  a  good  musician,  and  not 
without  claim  to  an  humble  rank  as  a  poet;  and  he  was 
surrounded  by  "a  crew  of  courtly  makers,"  foremost  among 
them  Wyatt  and  Surrey  who  were  imbued  with  like  tastes  and 
talents.  Neither  Wyatt  nor  Surrey  intrinsically  amount  to 
very  much.     In  form  they  limp  only  too  often  to  the  tiresome 


THE  SONNET  AND  BLANK-VERSE  21 

tune  of  what  was  known  as  Poulter's  measure,  a  verse  of  alter- 
nate sixes  and  sevens: 

So  feeble  is  the  thread,  that  doth  the  burden  stay. 
Of  my  poor  life,  in  heavy  plight  that  falleth  in  decay; 
That  but  it  have  elsewhere  some  aid  or  some  succors. 
The  running  spindle  of  my  fate  anew  shall  end  his  course. 

Inexpressibly  tiresome  is  this  kind  of  thing  when  prolonged 
to  any  degree.  In  substance,  too,  the  Wyatt-Surreian  lover, 
faint-hearted,  languishing,  and  despairing,  begets  in  the 
modern  reader,  according  to  mood,  disgust  or  mocking  laugh- 
ter. Yet  there  are  better  things  in  both  poets;  and  historically 
their  importance  is  unquestionable.  Wyatt  experimented  in 
English  verse,  counting  his  syllables;  Surrey  attained  a 
smoothness  and  ease  such  as  no  one  had  reached  in  England 
since  Chaucer.  Both  poets  attempted  new  meters  as  well 
as  novel-subject  matter,  derived  from  Italy  and  France. 
Wyatt,  before  its  rage  in  the  latter  country,  had  introduced  the 
sonnet  into  England;  and,  with  it,  that  close  imitation  and 
translation  of  Petrarch,  master  of  the  sonneteers,  and  of  the 
Petrarchists  of  France,  which  was  to  become  so  distinsuishin^ 
a  characteristic  of  Elizabethan  lyrists.  The  sonnet  thus  took 
the  English  fancy  and  became,  in  time,  one  of  the  noblest  of 
English  lyrical  forms.  The  French  ballade,  on  the  contrary, 
also  employed  by  Wyatt,  was  so  little  understood  that  Wyatt's 
first  editor,  Grimald,  misprinted  it;  and  save  for  Charles 
Cotton  in  the  Stuarts'  reign,  the  ballade  remained  unknown 
to  English  until  revived  in  our  own  day.  On  the  other  hand, 
Surrey  in  more  facile  versification  confirmed  the  practice  of 
the  sonnet  and  attempted  an  imitation  of  the  Italian  versi 
sctolti,  a  free  or  unrimed  verse  of  ten  syllables,  known  to 
English  literature  as  blank-verse.  /  Surely  it  was  no  small 
service  to  point  the  way  to  "Marlowe's  mighty  line,"  to  be 
the  first  to  practise  a  measure  immortalized  by  Shakespeare 
and  Milton.  Surrey's  translation  of  parts  of  the  Mneid  is 
the  earliest  English  blank-verse.  Nor  is  the  metrical  form 
of  these  two  early  Tudor  poets  their  only  claim  on  our  con- 
sideration.    In   them   appears   for  the   first  time   in   English 


22  LITERATURE  OF  THE  COTERIE 

the  subjective  note  that  has  come  so  markedly  to  distinguish 
modern  poetry.  It  was  this,  though  it  marked  little  more 
than  disconsolate  love,  that  was  recognized  in  TotteVs  Mts- 
crllany,  and  in  The  Gorgeous  Gallery  of  Gallant  Inventions^ 
Clement  Robinson's  Handful  of  Pleasant  Delights,  and  The 
Paradise  of  Dainty  Devises,  the  anthologies  of  like  charac- 
ter, if  inferior  repute,  that  followed  Tottel  in  the  seventies. 
What  Wyatt  and  Surrey  groped  for  in  the  lyric  of  art, 
George  Gascoigne,  chief  of  poets  between  their  time  and 
Spenser's,  furthered  with  a  certain  originality  and  force  of 
his  own.  Gascoigne  was  born  between  1530  and  1535  and 
educated  at  Cambridge,  the  Middle  Temple,  and  Gray's 
Inn.  Of  honorable  family  but  far  from  rich,  Gascoigne 
gravitated  naturally  to  court  and  remained,  with  an  interval 
of  service  as  a  soldier  in  the  Low  Countries,  a  courtier  and 
protege  at  one  time  of  Lord  Grey  de  Wilton,  at  last  of  Elizabeth 
herself.  It  was  in  the  congenial  society  of  his  fellows  of  the 
Inns  of  Court  that  Gascoigne  first  became  an  author  and  his 
versatility  in  poetry,  drama,  and  prose  was  as  great  as  his 
contemporary  reputation.  Under  the  title  of  A  Hundreth 
Sundry  Flowers  hound  up  in  one  Stnall  Posy,  Gascoigne  had  at- 
tempted, by  1572,  songs  and  sonnets  in  the  manner  of  Surrey, 
elegies,  autobiographical  and  narrative  poems,  in  excellence 
well  above  the  best  work  of  his  immediate  contemporaries, 
a  satire  in  blank  verse  of  considerable  merit  entitled  The 
Steel  Glass,  and  three  dramas,  each  somewhat  a  departure  in 
its  own  kind.  The  prose  writings  of  Gascoigne  also  deserve 
attention  for  a  directness  and  simplicity  of  style  and  a  freedom 
from  Latinism  rare  in  his  day.  To  Gascoigne  belong  the 
earliest  set  treatise  on  versification  in  the  English  language 
and  the  first  attempt  to  imitate,  on  the  basis  of  an  English 
story,  the  "novels"  of  Italy  already  popular  in  England  in 
the  translations  of  Painter,  Fenton,  and  others.  Gascoigne's 
story,  The  Adventures  of  Master  Ferdinando  'Jeronimi  (other- 
wise Master  Freeman  Jones)  enjoyed,  like  some  of  his  poetry, 
a  repute  not  a  little  enhanced  by  allusions  and  innuendoes  of 
a  scandalous  nature.  Yet  Gascoigne  was  one  of  the  choir  of 
poets  that  welcomed  Queen  Elizabeth  to  Kenilworth  at  the 


GASCOIGNE  AND  HIS  ASSOCIATES  23 

command  of  the  Earl  of  Leicester  during  the  festivities  there 
in  1575.  Gascoigne's  poetry  is  always  egotistic,  it  is  often 
autobiographical.  He  was  overwhelmed  at  times  with  repen- 
tance for  "his  youth  misspent"  and  employed  his  later  days 
in  penning  devotional  pamphlets  and  eulogizing  the  queen  in 
what  seems  a  measurably  successful  endeavor  to  serve  in  the 
royal  employ.  Gascoigne  was  not  a  scholar  though  he  was 
a  cultivated  man  of  the  world;  and  both  in  his  sensible  little 
treatise,  Certain  Notes  of  Instruction  concerning  the  Making 
of  Verse  and  Rime  in  English,  and  in  his  practice  of  the  art  of 
poetry,  he  maintained  an  attitude  of  remarkable  independence 
alike  of  classical  models  and  of  modern  foreign  influences. 

Gascoigne's  literary  associates  include  such  now  forgotten 
names  as  Francis  Kinwelmarsh,  his  coadjutor  in  the  transla- 
tion of  the  tragedy  Jocasta,  Alexander  Nevile,  translator  of 
Seneca,  Barnabe  Googe,  writer  of  Eclogues,  and  Thomas 
Churchyard,  general  pamphleteer.  Other  poetical  contem- 
poraries were  the  Earl  of  Oxford,  Humphrey  GifFord,  Matthew 
Grove,  and  Thomas  Howell.  George  Whetstone's  prosaic 
Muse  celebrated  Gascoigne's  obsequies.  But  among  the 
commendatory  verses  prefixed  to  the  Posies,  one  set  is  signed 
with  initials  that  may  stand  for  Gabriel  Harvey,  Spenser's 
Hobbinol  and  Mentor  of  the  Areopagus,  whilst  to  The  Steel 
Glass  we  find  prefixed  a  series  of  verses  signed  "Walter  Rawely 
of  the  Middle  Temple."  Indeed,  when  Gascoigne  died,  ini 
1577,  Spenser  had  already  passed  to  his  master's  degree  atj 
Cambridge  and  but  two  years  remained  to  the  publication  of 
The  Shepherds' Calendar  and  the  broad  daylight  of  Elizabethan 
poetry.  As  for  Sidney,  though  but  twenty-two  years  of  age, 
he  was  already  abroad  on  an  embassy  to  the  Emperor  of 
Germany  and  the  poetry  of  Astrophel  and  Stella  was  soon 
to  be  seething  in  his  brain. 

Philip  Sidney  was  the  son  of  Sir  Henry  Sidney,  Lord 
Deputy  of  Ireland  and  President  of  Wales,  one  of  Elizabeth's 
most  tried  and  faithful  servants;  his  mother  was  sister  to 
Robert  Dudley,  the  great  Earl  of  Leicester  who  courted  Queen 
Elizabeth  so  assiduously.  The  Sidneys  were  of  better  blood 
than  the  Dudleys.     Sir  Henry  appears  to  have  been  too  honest 


24  LITERATURE   OF  THE   COTERIE 

to  become  wealthy;  but  Philip,  as  his  eldest  son,  with  birth  the 
most  honorable  and  as  nephew  and  possible  heir  to  Leicester, 
started  with  much  that  fortune  could  give.  Sidney  enjoyed, 
too,  the  best  of  educations,  going  to  Shrewsbury  School  and 
thence  to  Oxford.  It  was  at  Shrewsbury  that  Sidney  formed 
his  enduring  friendship  with  Fulke  Greville.  Sidney  was  a 
grave  and  precocious  youth  and  employed  the  leisure  of  his 
attendance  at  court  in  travel  abroad,  or  in  study.  His 
interests  were  general  —  history,  "plantation,"  as  coloniza- 
tion was  called,  politics,  philosophy,  science,  and  literature. 
An  idea  of  the  diversity  of  Sidney's  talents  may  be  gleaned 
from  the  fact  that  he  was  prized  by  William  the  Silent  as  "one 
of  the  ripest  and  greatest  counselors  of  estate  in  Europe/' 
esteemed  by  the  learned  Languet  for  his  scholarship,  appreciat- 
ed for  his  love  of  philosophy  by  Giordano  Bruno,  intimate  with 
Drake,  Frobisher,  and  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert  for  his  interest 
in  adventurous  voyage  and  colonization,  and  beloved  by  the 
poets  —  Spenser  foremost  among  them  —  for  his  poetry. 
"There  was  not  an  approved  painter,  skilful  engineer,  ex- 
cellent musician,  or  any  other  artificer  of  fame  that  made  him- 
self not  known  to  him,"  says  Greville. 

Like  the  poetry  of  Wyatt  and  Gascoigne,  that  of  Sidney 
and  of  Spenser  maintained  a  tradition  and  a  cult.  Confined 
to  a  limited  and  select  circle,  it  emulated  in  its  practice  and 
its  patronage  of  the  arts  the  amenities  of  Italian  courts  such 
as  that  of  Urbino  and  in  its  theories  about  literature  and  its 
experiments  in  poetry,  the  group  of  writers  known  in  France 
as  the  PVeiade.  The  Arcadia,  written  in  the  seclusion  of 
Penshurst,  the  seat  of  the  Earl  of  Pembroke,  read  to  a  group 
of  intimate  friends  there,  page  by  page,  and  dedicated  to  the 
author's  beloved  sister;  The  Faery  Queen,  allegorically  setting 
forth  the  doings  of  the  queen  and  noble  personages  of  her 
court,  as  much  a  book  of  the  ideal  man  and  of  ideal  conduct 
in  life  as  The  Courtier  itself;  Lyly's  Euphues,  the  popular 
novel  of  the  moment,  no  less  the  work  of  an  attendant  at 
court  and  no  less  addressed  to  a  select  and  limited  audience: 
all  of  these  belong  to  the  literature  of  the  coterie.  And  so 
do  Lyly's   dramas   and   in   a   sense  likewise,  A  Midsummer- 


(  UNfVERSrTY  )) 

V        ^^         yy 
^^-4!ISS5^*^THE  AREOPAGUS  25 

Night's  Dream,  perhaps  prepared  to  celebrate  the  marriage 
of  that  "universal  patroness  of  poets,  Lucy  Harington,"  to 
the  Earl  of  Bedford  in  the  royal  presence. 

Sidney's  poetry  was,  in  even  a  narrower  sense  than  this, 
literature  of  the  coterie.  From  certain  letters  exchanged 
between  Spenser  and  Gabriel  Harvey,  we  learn  that,  in  the 
late  seventies,  there  existed  in  London  a  species  of  literary 
club  called  the  Areopagus,  which  interested  itself  in  poetry, 
experiments  in  versification,  and  other  literary  matters.  This 
intimacy  of  the  young  poets  and  courtiers  of  the  time  is  in- 
terestingly illustrated  in  many  poems  and  especially  in  the 
"two  pastorals  made  by  Sir  Philip  Sidney  upon  his  meeting 
his  two  worthy  friends  Sir  Edward  Dyer  and  Mr.  Fulke 
Greville. "     A  couple  of  stanzas  will  show  the  relation : 

Join,  mates,  in  mirth  with  me. 

Grant  pleasure  to  our  meeting, 
Let  Pan,  our  good  god,  see 

How  grateful  is  our  greeting. 
Join  hearts  and  hands,  so  let  it  be; 
Make  but  one  mind  in  bodies  three. 

Sweet  Orpheus'  harp,  whose  sound 

The  steadfast  mountains  moved. 
Let  here  thy  skill  abound 

To  join  sweet  friends  beloved. 
Join  hearts  and  hands,  so  let  it  be; 
Make  but  one  mind  in  bodies  three. 

"This  happy  blessed  trinity,"  as  it  is  called  in  another 
stanza,  was  the  heart  of  the  Areopagus.  About  these  three 
were  clustered  a  chosen  few  that  were  interested  in  poetry 
and  in  theories  about  it.  Spenser,  then  newly  come  to  court, 
could  not  fail  to  be  drawn  into  such  a  brotherhood,  whilst 
Gabriel  Harvey,  the  pedantic  and  somewhat  unwise  but 
zealous  Cambridge  don,  friend  and  self-constituted  Mentor 
of  Spenser,  surveyed  the  proceedings  from  afar  and  amused 
himself — if  not  others — by  writing  censorious  or  jocular 
letters  to  Spenser  on  the  subjects  of  the  discussion,  all  of 
which  letters,  as  we  have  seen,  Harvey  carefully  preserved 


26  LITERATURE  OF  THE  COTERIE 

and  printed  a  few  years  later  for  general  edification  and  for 
the  particular  aggrandisement  of  his  own  importance.  Later 
members  of  the  Areopagus  were  Samuel  Daniel  and  Abraham 
Fraunce,  like  Harvey  a  champion  and  practicer  of  English 
hexameter  verse. 

The  Areopagus  entered  heart  and  soul  into  a  discussion  of 
the  most  pressing  literary  problem  of  the  day,  the  relative 
merits  of  ancient  and  modern  versification.  This  question 
had  been  first  mooted  In  print  in  England  by  the  excellent 
Ascham,  in  his  Schoolmaster,  printed  in  1570,  two  years  after 
the  author's  death.  Gascoigne  wrote  his  sensible  little  treatise 
as  we  have  seen,  some  five  years  later,  laying  down  rules  of 
thumb  for  the  making  of  English  verse;  and  King  James 
followed,  exercising  his  boyish  pen  in  the  same  momentous 
subject  in  the  preface  to  a  volume  which  he  entitled  Essays 
of  a  Prentice  itj  the  Divine  Art  of  Poesy,  1 586.  With  the 
example  of  Roman  literature  before  them,  a  literature  based 
on  that  of  Greece  and  successful  in  the  main  only  where  it 
had  faithfully  followed  its  prototypes,  it  was  not  surprising 
that  men,  educated  In  the  classics,  should  conceive  that  the 
salvation  of  English  literature  was  to  be  reached  only  In  a 
slavish  following  of  the  ancients.  Long  were  the  discussions 
of  Harvey,  Spenser,  and  others  concerning  the  quantities  of 
English  words.  Thomas  Drant,  the  translator  of  Horace, 
set  up  a  system,  the  rival  of  Harvey's.  William  Webbe,  a 
tutor  of  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  in  A  Discourse  of 
English  Poetry,  1586,  ventilated  his  opinion  "touching  the 
reformation  of  our  English  verse"  and  "travestied"  a  poem 
or  two  of  The  Shepherds'  Calendar  into  sapphics;  Stanihurst, 
even  doing  six  books  of  the  Mneid  into  some  of  the  most 
astonishing  vernacular  hexameters  that  have  ever  been  per- 
petrated in  the  name  of  poetry.  Sidney  alone  of  his  time 
discerned  the  larger  issues  of  this  controversy,  and,  recognizing 
the  beauties  of  Italian  poetry  as  well  as  those  of  the  classics, 
conducted  a  marvellously  complete  set  of  experiments  in 
classical  meters  and  Italian  forms:  the  more  marvellous 
when  we  remember  his  preoccupation  and  the  extraordinary 
variety  of  interests  that  claimed  his  attention  and  his  time. 


SIDNEY'S  EXPERIMENTS  IN  VERSE  27 

Not  to  pursue  this  topic  too  far,  it  may  none  the  less  be  re- 
corded that  an  elaborate  and  important  treatise  on  The  Art  of 
English  Poesy,  published  in  1589  and  attributed  to  George 
Puttenham,  upholds  the  possibilities  of  English  versification 
in  the  course  of  an  exhaustive  discussion  of  matters  historical, 
rhetorical,  and  fantastic  concerning  poetry  and  language  at 
large.  Indeed,  the  latest  guns  in  this  long  controversy  were 
not  fired  until  the  very  last  years  of  Elizabeth's  reign  when 
Thomas  Campion,  musician  and  lyric  poet,  and  Samuel 
Daniel,  one  of  the  last  of  the  Sidneian  circle,  measured  swords 
on  the  subject  in  their  tracts,  entitled  respectively  Observations 
on  the  Art  of  English  Poesy  and  A  Defense  of  Rime,  l6o2  and 
1603. 

But  let  us  return  to  Sidney  and  his  experiments  in  exotic 
forms  of  verse.  Sidney's  Astrophel  and  Stella,  offers  a  com- 
plete vindication  of  the  sonnet,  practised  in  a  dozen  different 
forms,  to  adoption  into  the  English  language.  In  the  poems 
which  diversify  the  Arcadia,  may  be  found  experiments  in 
the  terza  rima,  the  dignified  and  exquisite  verse  of  the  Divina 
Comedia  of  Dante;  in  the  canzone  and  in  the  sestina,  intricate 
interlacings  of  successive  stanzas;  and  in  the  madrigal,  a 
dainty  little  verse-form,  commonly  written  for  music.  There 
likewise  are  as  successful  achievements  in  classical  sapphics, 
anacreontics,  elegiacs,  and  hexameters  as  may  be  devised  in 
a  tongue  which  is  compelled,  as  is  English,  to  substitute, 
as  a  governing  feature,  accentual  stress  for  the  classic  principle 
of  quantity,  and  an  arbitrary  ascription  of  quantity  to  English 
syllables  for  that  nice  system  which  the  genius  of  classical 
prosody  had  invoked.  In  a  word,  Sidney  tested  by  exhaus- 
tive experiment  the  possibilities  of  both  classical  and  Italian 
metrical  forms  transplanted  into  English  verse.  He  died 
before  he  made  known  his  verdict.  But  when  it  is  recalled  that 
no  poem  of  his  was  published  in  his  lifetime,  we  cannot  affirm 
that  he  was  absolutely  satisfied  with  his  results. 

But  we  are  not  without  knowledge  of  Sidney's  larger  tenets 
as  to  literature  and  art.  The  age  was  full  of  literary  con- 
troversy. Ascham  had  inveighed  against  riming  and  the 
running  of  the  letter  with  "the  Gothic  barbarism"  that  fos- 


28  LITERATURE   OF  THE   COTERIE 

tered  it;  but  he  had  warned  the  age  against  "the  Siren  en- 
chantments of  Italy"  and  declared  "an  Itahanate  Enghshman 
an  incarnate  devil."  Gascoigne,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
content  to  treat  of  English  verse  as  it  was,  and  waste  no  time 
either  in  abuse  or  in  praise  of  foreign  matters.  Another  ques- 
tion of  the  day  was  raised  by  the  new  and  surprising  up-growth 
and  popularity  of  vernacular  plays  acted  on  improvised  stages 
in  public  taverns  and  other  resorts.  In  1579  Stephen  Gosson 
wrote  a  book  which  he  entitled  The  School  of  Abuse,  "a  pleas- 
ant invective  against  poets,  pipers,  players,  jesters,  and  such 
like  caterpillars  of  the  commonwealth."  This,  as  its  title  sets 
forth,  was  one  of  a  series  of  attacks  upon  the  stage  and  its 
abuses  —  attacks  which  were  often  extended  Puritanically 
to  include  all  art.  Gosson  was  a  renegade  actor  and  play- 
wright and  exhibits  much  of  the  zeal  and  rancor  of  the  re- 
claimed. Whether  in  impudence  or  in  honest  mistake,  he 
dedicated  \\\s  School  to  Sidney,  and  "was  for  his  labor  scorned," 
reports  Spenser,  "at  least  if  it  be  in  the  goodness  of  that  nature 
to  scorn."  Gosson  was  almost  immediately  answered  by 
Lodge  in  a  Defense  of  Poesy,  Music,  and  Stage  Plays,  a  book 
of  much  eloquence  and  suavity;  and  soon  after  Sidney  wrote 
his  own  Defense,  not  for  publication,  but  for  circulation  among 
his  friends. 

Sidney's  Defense  of  Poesy  is  a  work  of  genuine  and  fervid 
enthusiasm,  remarkable  in  its  breadth  and  liberality,  and  of 
a  nature  comparable  at  least  in  its  effects  to  Lessing's  famous 
Laocoon.  Sidney  transcended  the  hmits  of  Gosson's  petty 
objections  to  consider  on  wide  and  philosophical  grounds  the 
nature  of  poetry,  its  relation  to  history  and  to  philosophy,  and 
eloquently  to  plead  its  divine  origin  and  its  beneficent  influence 
on  human  life.  Nor  is  it  a  serious  criticism  of  this  work  to 
acknowledge  the  influence  upon  it  of  "current  continental 
criticism."  But  admirable  as  The  Defense  was  in  its  day,  the 
historical  value  of  this  little  treatise  is  even  greater;  for  it 
defines  for  us  the  position  of  a  talented,  judicious,  and  inde- 
pendent young  critic  about  the  time  that  Spenser  was  begin- 
ning The  Faery  Queen  and  Shakespeare  was  still  wandering, 
a  mischievous  rather  than  a  dreamy  lad,  among  the  lanes  of 


"THE  DEFENSE  OF  POESY"  29 

Warwickshire.  The  Defense  of  Poesy  must  have  been  written 
soon  after  1580,  though  it  first  appeared  in  print  in  1595.  It 
is  not,  then,  surprising  that  we  should  find  Sidney  expressing 
discontent  with  poetry  and  declaring  that  besides  Chaucer, 
The  Mirror  for  Magistrates,  Surrey's  lyrics  and  The  Shep- 
herds' Calendar,  "1  do  not  remember  to  have  seen  but  few 
(to  speak  boldly)  printed  that  have  poetical  sinews  in  them." 
In  the  light  of  this  date  of  writing,  Sidney's  praise  of  Gorboduc 
and  his  decided  preference  of  Sophocles  and  Euripides  over 
the  English  dramatists  Edwards  and  Preston,  most  popular 
of  their  time,  is  in  no  wise  amazing.  Five  or  six  years  were 
yet  to  elapse  before  T amhiirlaine  was  to  sound  a  new  era  for 
English  drama,  and  Gascoigne  and  Whetstone  represented 
the  height  to  which  the  English  dramatic  genius  had  by  that 
time  attained.  Equally  interesting  is  Sidney's  attitude  of 
criticism  towards  the  new  Euphuistic  prose,  which  had  al- 
ready fallen  into  the  abuses  of  excess.  He  puts  his  finger 
on  three  of  its  distinctive  features,  declaring  of  alliterative 
writers  that  they  pursue  the  "coursing  of  a  letter,  as  if  they 
were  bound  to  follow  the  method  of  a  dictionary";  likening 
the  undue  use  of  ornament  to  "those  Indians"  who  are  "not 
content  to  wear  ear-rings  at  the  fit  and  natural  place  of  the 
ears,  but  they  will  thrust  jewels  through  their  nose  and  lips 
because  they  will  be  sure  to  be  fine."  But  the  living  value  of 
The  Defense  lies  in  the  liberality  and  lofty  ideality  of  its  con- 
ception of  poetry  and  in  its  aflRrmation  of  poetry's  true  function 
in  life.  We  have  here  no  petty  dallying  with  the  "toys  of 
wit,"  as  Puttenham  denominates  poems,  fit  only  "to  fill  the 
vacant  hours  of  time  of  idle  courtiers  and  gentlewomen,"  but 
the  serious  assignment  of  poetry  to  that  concrete  representa- 
tion of  human  ideals  in  forms  of  imperishable  beauty,  which 
has  formed  an  essential  part  of  every  true  definition  of  this 
subtlest  of  the  arts  since  philosophers  began  to  define. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  the  poetry  of  Sidney.  Astrophel  and 
Stella  (like  the  rest  of  Sidney's  work)  was  printed  after  his 
death,  appearing  first  in  a  surreptitious  edition  in  1591,  and 
procured  for  the  printers  by  Thoijias  Nash.  This  earliest 
sequence  of  its  kind  in  the  language  consists  of  one  hundred 


30  LITERATURE  OF  THE  COTERIE 

and  ten  sonnets  with  a  few  Intercalated  lyrics  in  other  meas- 
ures. The  series  was  indubitably  inspired  by  the  sonnets  of 
Petrarch  and  the  Platonic  ideals  of  love  therein  upheld  by  the 
Italian  poet's  cult  of  his  ideal  mistress,  Laura.  Moreover, 
Sidney  was  acquainted  not  only  with  Italian  poetry,  but  with 
French  poetry,  notably  Ronsard,  and  the  rest  of  the  PUiade  as 
well.  He  followed  their  guidance  as  to  the  professional  manner 
of  writing  a  sonnet,  if  we  may  put  it  so,  precisely  as  he  might 
imitate  an  ancient  meter  or  observe  any  other  poetic  con- 
vention. Until  lately  it  has  been  customary  to  recognize  in 
the  fervor  of  the  poetry  of  Astrophel  and  Stella  the  poetical 
expression  of  a  leaf  from  Sidney's  life;  and  his  age  appears  to 
have  accepted  his  sonnets  as  such.  According  to  this  view, 
Astrophel  and  Stella  sets  forth  the  story  of  Sidney's  love  for  the 
Lady  Penelope  Devereux,  daughter  of  the  first  Earl  of  Essex 
who  was  much  attached  to  Sidney  and  had  suggested  a  match 
between  the  two  as  early  as  1576,  when  Philip  was  twenty  and 
Penelope  a  little  maid  of  twelve.  But  Sidney,  proving  un- 
willing, whether  from  disinclination  to  marry  at  all,  ambition 
to  achieve  a  higher  position  than  was  his  before  doing  so,  or 
indifference,  another  match  was  at  once  arranged  for  Stella, 
and  she  was  married  to  the  young  Lord  Rich,  who,  to  say  the 
least,  neglected  her.  As  to  Sidney,  he  soon  found  out  to  his 
disquiet  that,  having  lost  Stella  forever,  he  had  really  never 
ceased  to  love  her;  and  being  a  man  of  poetic  temperament 
—  the  temperament  that  seeks  consolation  and  relief  in  artistic 
expression  —  Sidney  spoke  out  his  heart  in  rime. 

Of  late,  however,  it  has  been  maintained  that  although 
"Sidney's  pursuit  of  the  favor  of  Lady  Rich,  a  coquettish 
friend  of  his  youth  who  married  another,"  may  have  "led  him 
to  turn  sonneteer,"  "he  wrote  under  the  glamour  of  Petrarchan 
idealism,  and  held  that  it  was  the  function  of  the  'lyrical  kind 
of  songs  and  sonnets'  to  sing  'the  praises  of  the  immortal 
beauty'  and  of  no  mundane  passion."^  According  to  this  idea, 
"detachment  from  the  realities  of  ordinary  passion,  which 
comes  with  much  reading  about  love  in  order  to  write  on  the 

^  See  Sidney  Lee,  Elizabethan  Sonnets,  i,  xliii;  Courthope, 
English  Poetry,  ii,  227-233. 


"ASTROPHEL  AND  STELLA"  31 

subject,  is  the  central  feature  of  Sidney's  sonnets";  and  it  is 
shown  triumphantly  that  Sidney  borrowed  idea  after  idea 
from  Petrarch,  Ronsard,  and  others,  addressing  the  Thames 
only  because  Ronsard  had  similarly  addressed  the  Rhone, 
and  apostrophizing  night,  sleep,  and  the  power  of  Stella's  eyes 
only  because  Petrarch  had  said  all  these  things  before  him. 

These  parallels  need  not  be  questioned  either  in  bulk  or 
in  detail.  But  it  may  well  be  queried  if  their  mere  existence 
is  in  itself  sufficient  to  deprive  the  story  adumbrated  in  Sidney's 
sonnets  of  all  subjective  basis  in  fact.  However  deeply  Sidney 
may  have  been  affected  by  the  study  which  we  know  he  made 
of  the  poetry  of  Italy  and  France,  and  whatever  was  to  be  the 
general  practice  of  English  sonneteers  to  come,  there  is  neither 
anything  improbable  in  the  situation  nor  in  the  emotions  de- 
tailed in  Astrophel  and  Stella.  The  following  sonnet  has  been 
found  to  parallel  one  of  Petrarch's;  it  may  none  the  less  have 
certain  reference  to  the  joustings  of  May,  1581,  in  which  Sid- 
ney and  his  friend  Greville  appeared  as  challengers,  clothed 
with  a  sumptuousness  and  attended  by  a  state  that  recalled  the 
tourneys  of  the  Middle  Ages : 

Having  this  day  my  horse,  my  hand,  my  lance 

Guided  so  well  that  I  obtained  the  prize. 

Both  by  the  judgment  of  the  English  eyes 

And  of  some  sent  from  that  sweet  enemy,  France; 

Horsemen  my  skill  in  horsemanship  advance. 

Town  folks  my  strength;  a  daintier  judge  applies 

His  praise  to  sleight  which  from  good  use  doth  rise; 

Some  lucky  wits  impute  it  but  to  chance; 

Others  because  of  both  sides  I  do  take 

My  blood  from  them  who  did  excell  in  this. 

Think  Nature  me  a  man-at-arms  did  make. 

How  far  they  shot  awry!   the  true  cause  is, 

Stella  looked  on,  and  from  her  heavenly  face 

Sent  fonh  the  beams  which  made  so  fair  my  race 

And  this  other  sonnet: 

Stella,  think  not  that  I  by  verse  seek  fame, 
Who  seek,  who  hope,  who  love,  who  live  but  thee; 
Thine  eyes  my  pride,  thy  lips  mine  history: 
If  thou  praise  not,  all  other  praise  is  shame. 


32  LITERATURE  OF  THE  COTERIE 

Nor  so  ambitious  am  I  as  to  frame 

A  nest  for  my  young  praise  in  laurel  tree; 

In  truth,  I  swear,  I  wish  not  there  should  be 

Graved  in  my  epitaph  a  poet's  name. 

Ne,  if  I  would,  could  I  just  title  make. 

That  any  laud  thereof  to  me  should  grow, 

Without  my  plumes  from  others'  wings  I  take: 

For  nothing  from  my  wit  or  will  doth  flow, 

Since  all  my  words  thy  beauty  doth  endite, 

And  Love  doth  hold  my  hand  and  makes  me  write. 

Assuredly  such  poetry  rings  with  more  than  the  trivial  music 
of  a  mere  Petrarchan  imitator;  or  all  instinct  for  poetry  must 
go  for  naught. 

Besides  Astrophel  and  Stella  the  greater  part  of  Sidney's 
poetry  is  found  strew^n  incidentally  through  the  pages  of  his 
romance,  the  Arcadia.  It  may  be  said  in  general  of  the  poetry 
of  the  Arcadia  that  it  seems  less  spontaneous  than  the  sonnets 
of  Astrophel,  less  poetry  of  direct  emotion;  and  yet  we  may 
wrong  Sidney  here  if  we  fail  to  recognize  that  delicacy  and 
elaboration  of  workmanship,  in  any  art,  need  not  necessarily 
destroy  that  sincerity  of  impulse  which  is  the  life  principle  of 
all  the  arts.  The  metrical  experiments  unconsidered,  there 
remains  much  in  the  poetry  of  the  Arcadia  worthy  of  the  author 
of  the  burning  lines  of  Astrophel  and  Stella 

Sidney's  poetry  is  imitative  of  the  loveliest  melodies  of 
contemporary  French  and  Italian  poetry,  and  resonant  with 
deeper  notes  of  the  music  of  the  classics.  It  was  Sidney  who 
popularized  the  pastoral  mode  as  well  as  the  sonnet  in  Eng- 
land. The  first  served  its  turn  in  offering  to  the  poets  of  the 
Elizabethan  spring-time  a  delicate  and  artistic  convention  in 
which  to  cradle  their  first  fledglings.  The  sonnet  had  been 
written  before,  as  we  have  seen,  but  never  with  such  success, 
in  a  variety  so  Italian,  or  in  a  sequence  which  so  emulated  the 
beauty  and  glory  of  the  sonnets  of  Dante  and  Petrarch.  The 
popularization  of  the  "conceit"  is  a  more  doubtful  service  of 
Sidney  to  the  literature  of  his  time.  Sidney's  romantic  temper 
delighted  in  the  ornament  of  detail,  and  no  grace  was  to  him 
too  trivial  or  bizarre  to  lavish  on  the  decoration  of  divine 


THE   POETRY  OF  SIDNEY  33 

poesy.  Though  thus  our  first  great  poet  to  fall  under  the  spell 
of  the  petty  "conceit"  with  its  extravagant  figure  and  far- 
fetched metaphor,  Sidney  erred  in  this  less  from  mere  delight 
in  these  petty  baubles  of  ingenuity  than  from  the  passionate 
current  of  a  poetical  eloquence  that  carried  great  thoughts  like 
trifles  and  trifles  like  great  thoughts  on  its  impetuous  torrent. 
More  certain  immediate  services  to  the  literature  of  his  age 
were  those  in  which  Sidney  proved  by  experiment  the  real 
possibilities  and  limitations  of  classical  prosody  as  applied  to 
the  construction  of  English  verse;  and  laid,  by  a  liberal  appli- 
cation of  ancient  and  Renaissance  Italian  theories  to  modern 
conditions,  the  foundations  of  English  aesthetics  and  criticism. 
But  whether  for  the  earnestness  and  eloquence  of  his  theories 
or  for  the  fervor  and  sincerity  with  which  he  applied  them,  it 
may  be  said  that  Sidney  was  the  poet  he  was  because  he  was 
the  man  he  was.  In  the  words  of  his  loving  and  faithful 
Jonathan,  Fulke  Greville,  whose  Life  of  Sidney  is  one  of  the 
sweetest  and  manliest  tributes  to  true  friendship  that  literature 
knows:  "His  very  ways  in  the  world  did  generally  add  reputa- 
tion to  his  Prince  and  country,  by  restoring  amongst  us  the 
ancient  majesty  of  noble  and  true  dealing;  as  a  manly  wisdom 
that  can  no  more  be  weighed  down  by  an  effeminate  craft 
than  Hercules  could  be  overcome  by  that  efi^eminate  army  of 
dwarfs.  And  this  was  it  which  I  profess  I  loved  dearly  in 
him,  and  still  shall  be  glad  to  honor  in  the  good  men  of  this 
time:  I  mean  that  his  heart  and  tongue  went  both  one  way, 
and  so  with  every  one  that  went  with  the  truth;  as  knowing 
no  other  kindred,  party,  or  end.  Above  all  he  made  the  religion 
he  professed  the  firm  basis  of  his  life." 


CHAPTER   III 
THE  NEW  CULTIVATED   PROSE 

IT  has  been  said  that  a  list  of  the  earliest  Elizabethan  books 
written  in  prose  is  chiefly  a  list  of  literary  curiosities; 
and  to  a  certain  degree  this  is  true,  though  we  are  coming 
more  and  more  to  understand  that  modern  English  prose  was 
not  the  invention  of  John  Dryden  or  of  any  other  subject  of 
King  Charles,  but  had  already  been  formed  in  all  its  essential 
particulars  in  the  age  that  produced  Hooker,  Bacon,  our 
English  Bible,  and  the  prose  of  Shakespeare  and  Jonson. 
But  much  had  to  go  before  results  such  as  these;  and  English 
prose  no  less  than  English  verse  was  compelled  to  pass  through 
the  period  of  experimentation  and  to  test  the  value  of  exotic 
models  before  it  came  to  its  own.  We  have  already  heard  of 
Elizabethan  Latinism  and  how  it  was  a  Latinism  of  structure 
and  idiom  rather  than  a  Latinism  of  vocabulary.  When 
learning  left  the  school  and  the  cloister  to  inhabit  likewise 
the  court,  new  ideals  w^ere  added  both  to  the  conception  of  life 
and  to  that  of  literature.  Scholarship  had  its  conventions; 
and  so,  too,  had  social  life.  There  was  a  correct  way  (as  to 
which  scholars  agreed)  in  which  to  write  the  learned  lan- 
guage, then,  be  it  remembered,  no  dead  tongue.  Might  there 
not  be  an  equally  correct  way  in  which  to  write  modern 
English,  a  way  in  which  the  graces  and  elegance  of  court  life 
might  be  expressed  in  contradistinction  to  the  common  tongue 
which  men  spoke  in  the  streets  and  taverns  ? 

John  Lyly,  the  Euphuist,  was  bom  in  Kent  about  1554. 
He  was  a  student  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford,  and  entered 
as  plehii  filius,  which  shows  that  he  was  a  poor  man.  An- 
thony a  Wood,  the  gossipy  biographer  of  Oxonians,  tells  us 
that  Lyly  "was  always  averse  to  the  crabbed  studies  of  logic 
and  philosophy,"  and  that  he  did  "in  a  manner  neglect 
academical  studies,  yet  not  so  much  that  he  took  not  the 

34 


LYLY  THE   EUPHUIST  35 

degrees  in  arts,  that  of  master  being  completed  in  1575." 
Lyly  seems  to  have  sought  the  patronage  of  Lord  Burleigh 
as  far  back  as  1574;  and  he  must  have  gone  up  to  London 
and  begun  attendance  on  the  court  soon  after  taking  his  mas- 
ter's degrefe.  Lyly  was  especially  desirous  of  obtaining  the 
Mastership  of  the  Queen's  Revels,  and  several  letters  of  his 
relative  to  this  remain.  Lyly  began  his  career  with  Euphues, 
the  /Anatomy  of  Wit,  registered  in  1578  and  published  in  the! 
next  year.  The  book  was  an  immediate  success,  and  Lyly 
probably  spent  the  better  part  of  1579  in  writing  the  second 
and  longer  part,  called  Euphues  and  his  England,  which 
appeared  in  1580.  Some  idea  of  the  esteem  in  which  this 
book  was  held  may  be  gained  from  one  or  two  contemporary 
opinions.  Thus  Webbe  in  his  Discourse  of  English  Poetryy 
1586,  comparing  the  achievements  of  the  ancients  with  modern 
writers,  says: 

Among  whom  I  think  there  is  none  that  will  gainsay,  but  Master 
John  Lyly  hath  deserved  most  high  commendations,  as  he  which 
hath  stepped  one  step  further  therein  than  any  either  before  or  since 
he  first  began  the  witty  discourse  of  his  Euphues.  Whose  works, 
surely  in  respect  of  his  singular  eloquence  and  grave  composition  of 
apt  words  and  sentences,  let  the  learned  examine  and  make  trial 
thereof  thorough  all  the  parts  of  rhetoric,  in  fit  phrases,  in  pithy  sen- 
tences, in  gallant  tropes,  in  flowing  speech,  in  plain  sense  and  surely,  in 
my  judgment,  I  think  he  will  yield  him  that  verdict,  which  Quintillian 
giveth  of  both  the  best  orators  Demosthenes  and  Tully,  that  from 
the  one,  nothing  may  be  taken  away,  to  the  other,  nothing  may  be 
added. 

Again  and  again  we  find  Lyly's  praises  sung  by  his  contem- 
poraries with  but  few  dissenting  voices.  As  late  as  1633  the 
publisher  of  Lyly's  collected  plays  exclaims:  "Our  nation 
are  in  his  debt,  for  a  new  English  which  he  taught  them. 
Euphues  and  his  England  began  first  that  languag  All  our 
ladies  were  then  his  scholars,  and  that  beauty  in  court,  which 
could  not  parley  Euphuism,  was  as  little  regarded  as  she 
which  now  there  speaks  not  French." 

The  volume  which  so  took  the  English  world  of  its  day 
by  storm  is  a  love  story  of  the  slenderest  possible  construction 


36  THE  NEW  CULTIVATED   PROSE 

in  which  is  told  the  adventures  in  England  and  elsewhere  of 
Euphues,  a  young  Athenian  gentleman  of  wealth  and  position, 
thus  offering  the  greatest  possible  number  of  opportunities 
for  conversation,  argument,  and  satirical  comment  on  topics 
most  of  them  of  contemporary  interest  and  moment.  The  plot, 
such  as  it  is,  hardly  moves  at  all,  and  little  or  no  characteriza- 
tion is  attempted.  It  is  neither  for  plot  nor  character  that 
Euphues  was  written;  except  so  far  as  these  things  are  neces- 
sary to  serve  as  the  foundations  on  which  to  construct  fine 
dialogue,  rhetorical  speeches,  and  moral  discourses.  But  a 
distinction  must  be  drawn  between  the  first  part,  Euphues, 
the  Anatomy  of  Wit,  which  is  in  the  main  a  philosophical  essay 
addressed  to  gentlemen  and  students,  and  Euphues  and  his 
England,  in  which  the  author  appeals  directly  "To  the  Ladies 
and  Gentlewomen  of  England,"  declaring  that  "Euphues 
would  rather  lie  shut  in  a  lady's  casket  than  open  in  a  scholar's 
study";  and  that  "there  shall  be  nothing  found  that  may 
offend  the  chaste  mind  with  unseemly  terms  and  uncleanly 
talk."  The  second  part  of  Euphues  is  therefore  much  less 
satirical  and  more  interested  in  the  refinements  of  choice 
ssociety,  more  concerned  with  the  intricacies  of  polite  love- 
making  and  the  repartee  of  smart  conversation  among  gentle- 
men and  gentlewomen.  While  neither  a  book  of  essays, — much 
less  of  philosopy, —  a  book  of  deportment  and  polite  conduct, 
nor  a  story  in  any  w^ise  worked  out  as  to  plot  or  character, 
it  is  yet  not  altogether  extravagant  to  say  that  in  Euphues  we 
have  the  earliest  important  piece  of  English  fiction,  the  slender 
beginnings  of  that  sea  of  writing  realistic  and  romantic  in 
which  the  modern  reader  finds  his  solace  and  his  delight. 
As  M.  Jusserand  has  pointed  out,  with  Euphues  commences 
in  England  the  literature  of  the  drawing-room 

And  yet  it  is  remarkable  how,  in  its  many  aspects,  Lyly's 
work  has  been  understood  and  misunderstood.  Charles 
Kingsley  called  it,  not  without  justice,"  as  brave,  righteous,  and 
pious  a  book  as  a  man  need  look  into";  and  the  year  1900 
saw  it  abused  in  print  as  "a  piece  of  square-toed,  finical 
vacuity,"  whatever  that  may  mean.  The  most  complete 
failure  to  represent  Euphues  and  Euphuism  —  though  we  may 


EUPHUISM  S7 

say  with  Dr.  Horace  Howard  Furness,  "it  stabs,  to  couple 
this  word  with  that  great  and  dear  memory" —  was  Sir  Waher 
Scott's  in  his  character  of  Sir  Percie  Shafton  in  The  Monastery. 
As  to  Euphuism  the  word  is  constantly  misused,*  although 
the  subject  has  been  now  so  thoroughly  discussed  that  there 
is  no  excuse  for  any  misunderstanding. 

Euphuism  is  a  rhetorical  prose  style.  It  is  concerned 
neither  with  the  choice  of  subject-matter  nor  with  vocabulary. 
Hence  the  common  use  of  the  word  to  denote  a  florid  and 
poetic  style,  the  chief  features  of  which  are  foreign  and  far- 
fetched words,  is  indefensible.  Euphuism  is  concerned 
wholly  with  grammatical  structure  and  syntax,  and  its  purpose 
is  the  inducement  of  an  artificial  emphasis  by  means  of  an- 
tithesis and  repetition  in  sentence  form  and  relation.  Its 
sentences  are  elaborate  in  their  antithetical  or  parallel 
structure,  they  are  balanced  and  pointed,  and  constructively 
as  symmetrical  as  possible.  The  means  used  to  produce  all 
this  is  complicated  and  yet  not  unreducible  to  certain  very 
definite  categories.  In  the  first  place,  Lyly  is  very  fond  of 
oratorical  question  and  response,  a  device  too  familiar  to  need 
illustration.  Secondly,  he  employs  figurative  language  in  a 
deliberately  artificial  manner,  often  taking  familiar  natural 
objects  and  stringing  them  together  in  similitudes,  all  illus- 
trating the  same  point.  For  example:  "As  therefore  the 
sweetest  rose  hath  his  prickle,  the  finest  velvet  his  brack,  the 
fairest  flower  his  bran,  so  the  sharpest  wit  hath  his  wanton 
will,  and  the  holiest  head  his  wicked  way."  Again,  Lyly 
carried  to  excess  the  fondness  of  his  age  for  allusion  to  classi- 
cal and  mythical  history,  revelling  with  delight  in  that  redis- 
covered world  in  a  true  spirit  of  the  Renaissance.  Thus  he 
asks:  "Did  not  Giges  cut  Candaules'  coat  by  his  own  meas- 
ure .''  Did  not  Paris,  though  he  were  a  welcome  guest  to 
Menelaus,  serve  his  host  a  slippery  prank?"  Opening  his 
book   at   random,   we   find    Diogenes,    Pythagoras,   Socrates, 

^  See  especially  Mr.  Courthope's  perverse  employment  of  the 
word  in  connection  with  poetry.  The  authoritative  monograph  on 
the  topic  is  that  of  C.  G.  Child,  John  Lyly  and  Euphuism,  Miin- 
chener  Beitrdge,  vii,  1 894. 


38  THE   NEW  CULTIVATED   PROSE 

Plato,  Milo,  Lycurgus,  Lacedemonians,  and  Tliessalians  all  on 
one  page.  Scarcely  less  pervasive  and  excessive  are  the 
figures  and  illustrations  which  Lyly  derives  from  nature  per- 
verted, w^hat  has  been  dubbed  Lyly's  "unnatural  natural 
history."  "It  is  like  to  fare  with  thee  as  with  the  eagle, 
which  dieth  neither  for  age  nor  with  sickness,  but  with  famine, 
for  although  thy  stomach  hunger  yet  thy  heart  will  not  suffer 
thee  to  eat."  "I  have  read,  that  the  bull  being  tied  to  the 
fig-tree,  loseth  his  strength;  that  the  whole  herd  of  deer  stand 
at  the  gaze,  if  they  smell  a  sweet  apple;  that  the  dolphin  by 
the  sound  of  music  is  brought  to  the  shore."  No  trick  of  Lyly 
has  called  forth  so  much  ridicule  as  this;  but  is  it  much  more 
unnatural  than  our  own  contemporary  "animal  story,"  which, 
under  guise  of  an  accurate  chronicle  of  nature  (to  which  Lyly 
made  no  pretense)  ascribes  to  the  beasts  of  the  fields  and  the 
prairies  manlike  qualities  of  thought  and  reasoned  action 
which  would  do  credit  to  the  talking  dragons  and  diabolical 
werewolves  of  the  dark  ages  ? 

But  more  distinctive  than  all  these  artificial  similitudes 
and  illustrations  is  Lyly's  equally  deliberate  employment  of 
certain  devices  for  rhetorical  emphasis.  Alliteration,  which 
is  the  correspondence  of  the  initial  sound  of  words  otherwise 
dissimilar,  is  as  old  as  the  language.  As  is  universally  known, 
it  was  a  chief  distinguishing  trait  of  Old  English  verse,  and  it 
remains  one  of  the  graces  of  modern  English  poetry.  Lyly 
makes  use  of  this  familiar  device  in  the  subtlest  possible 
manner,  simply,  continuously,  transversely.  He  plays  v/ith 
words  of  like  sound  or  similar  sound,  producing  what  is  tech- 
nically know  as  assonance  and  annomination,  and  employs 
all  this  to  emphasize  and  ornament  a  larger  likeness  of  clause 
and  phrase. 

Cast  not  your  eyes  on  the  beauty  of  women,  lest  ye  cast  away 
your  hearts  with  folly;  let  not  that  fond  love,  wherewith  youth  fatteth 
himself  as  fat  as  a  fool  infect  you;  for  as  a  sinew,  being  cut,  though  it 
be  healed,  there  will  always  remain  a  scar;  or  as  fine  linen  stained  with 
black  ink,  though  it  be  washed  never  so  often,  will  have  an  iron  mole: 
so  the  mind  once  mangled  or  maimed  with  love,  though  it  be  never 
so  well  cured  with  reason,  or  cooled  by  wisdom,  yet  there  will  appear 


EUPHUISTIC  LITERATURE  39 

a  scar,  by  the  which  one  may  guess  the  mind  hath  been  pierced  and 
a  blemish  whereby  one  may  judge  the  heart  hath  been  stained. 

Here  the  whole  passage  is  balanced  and  antithetical  as  are 
equally  its  various  members;  it  begins  with  a  play  on  words 
(^cast  not  your  eyes,  cast  away  your  hearts);  alliteration  is 
present  in  "fatteth  himself  fat  as  z  fool,"  "mind  once  maimed 
and  mangled,"  "cured  with  reason,  cooled  with  wisdom," 
where  the  antithical  words  reason  and  wisdom  chime,  as  well 
as  cured  and  cooled.  Lastly  parisonic  antithesis  is  illustrated 
in  the  "mind  maimed  with  love,  cured  with  reason,  cooled  by 
wisdom";    whilst  the    Euphuistic  similitudes   are    pervasive, 

albeit  we  are  for  once  spared  a  piece  of  unnatural  nature  lore.        ._ 

In  a  word,  Lyly  uses  alliteration  continuously  or  transversely 
for  ornament  to  mark  parallel  or  antithesis.  All  of  these 
devices  are  more  or  less  constantly  present  in  Lyly's  earlier 
prose  whether  in  Euphues  or  in  his  dramas. 

Euphuism  was  not  the  invention  of  Lyly,  although  most  (^ 

highly  developed  in  his  hands.     It  is  a  style  of  marked  and  ^ 

unmistakable  character  discoverable  in  English  literature  as 
early  as  1532,  reaching  its  height  between  1579  and  1590, 
and  continuing  even  beyond  that  in  Lyly's  imitators.  Ascham 
and  his  contemporaries  were  chiefly  engaged  in  writing  clearly, 
although  Ascham  himself  employs  antithesis  with  eflPect.  In 
1557  appeared  North's  Z) /a/ o/Pnnf^j-,  In  this  book  is  found 
an  occasional  use  of  parisonic  balance,  simple  alliteration, 
and  figurative  allusions  in  argumentative  illustrations.  This, 
North  seems  to  have  derived  in  part  from  a  French  transla- 
tion of  the  works  of  Antonio  de  Guevara,  a  Spanish  writer  of 
history  and  familiar  letters  whose  Epistolce  Aurece  enjoyed 
great  reputation  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII,  and  was  trans- 
lated into  English  early  in  Elizabeth's  reign.  In  1577  ap- 
peared a  book  entitled  Pettie  his  Palace  of  Pleasure,  a  collection 
of  stories  translated  from  the  French.  The  style  of  this  work 
retains  and  augments  the  peculiarities  already  noted  in  North, 
and  adds  allusions  to  fabulous  natural  history  and  the  device 
of  oratorical  question  and  response,  thus  anticipating  Lyly 
in  every  one  of  the  characteristics  of  Euphuism.  What  Lyly 
did  then  was   to   heighten   these   devices  and  maintain  their 


40  THE  NEW  CULTIVATED  PROSE 

quality.  This,  added  to  the  sententious  force  and  persuasive 
morahty  of  his  book,  gave  it  its  success.  That  this  was  not 
due  alone  to  its  style  is  proved  by  its  superior  popularity  over 
Pettie's  book.  Euphues  reached  a  twelfth  edition  in  the  year 
1636,  and  then  was  left  unreprinted  until  1868 

The  vogue  of  Euphues  called  forth  a  swarm  of  imitators, 
and  the  new  literature  of  the  boudoir  was  thus  launched  in 
England  once  and  for  all.  M.  Jusserand  in  his  scholarly  and 
entertaining  work.  The  English  Novel  in  the  Time  of  Shake- 
speare, tells  how  the  word  "Euphues"  was  played  on  in  the 
titles  of  books.  There  was  Zelauto,  the  Fountain  of  Fame, 
."containing  a  delicate  disputation  .  .  .  given  for 
a  friendly  entertainment  to  Euphues,"  by  Anthony  Munday, 
1580;  there  was  Euphues  his  Censure  to  Phdautus,  1587,  and 
Menaphon,  Camilla's  Alarm  to  slumbering  Euphues,  two  years 
later,  both  by  Robert  Greene,  poet,  dramatist,  pamphleteer, 
and  enemy  of  Shakespeare.  There  was  Rosalynd,  Euphues 
Golden  Legacy  by  Thomas  Lodge,  1590,  delightful  original 
of  As  You  Like  It;  and  Arishas,  Euphues  amidst  his  Slum- 
bers by  John  Dickenson,  1594.  But  far  more  than  the  title 
o^  Euphues  was  followed  in  Barnabe  Riche's  Don  Simonides, 
1 58 1,  who  travels  abroad  like  Euphues  and  then  comes  to 
England  to  meet  Philautus,  Euphues'  friend  in  Lyly's  story. 
In  Zelauto,  likewise,  a  gentleman  of  station  comes,  after 
other  travel,  to  view  "the  happy  estate  of  England,"  and  learn 
"how  a  worthy  princess  governed  their  commonwealth." 
Other  books  more  or  less  in  Lyly's  manner  were  Melbancke's 
Philotimus,  1 583,  Warner's  Pan  his  Syrinx,  1584,  and 
Emanuel  Ford's  popular  Parismus,  1598,  with  further  like 
stories  by  Munday,  Lodge,  Greene,  and  others. 

Although  the  earlier  of  these  productions  make  a  deter- 
mined effort  to  imitate  the  artificialities  and  mannerisms  of 
Lyly's  style,  few  succeeded  to  any  degree;  and  they  certainly 
added  nothing  to  the  devices  for  emphasis  and  other  rhetorical 
niceties  for  which  Lyly  must  always  stand  notoriously  emi- 
nent among  writers  of  English  prose.  Greene  made  almost  no 
use  of  such  features  of  Euphuism  as  its  fabulous  natural  his- 
tory, and  he  carried  its  other  mannerisms  to  no  inordinate 


SIDNEY'S  "ARCADIA"  41 

length.  Thomas  Nash's  vigorous  and  vernacular  English 
lent  itself  with  difficulty  for  a  passing  moment  to  a  style  so 
alien  to  his  own.  Lodge  is  the  most  confirmed  of  the  Euphu- 
ists  after  the  master  himself;  but  in  the  best  of  Lodge's  work, 
as  for  example  his  Rosalynd,  the  story  and  the  characters  have 
taken  a  place  of  importance  —  as  they  do  likewise  in  the  best 
fiction  of  Greene  —  which  clarifies  the  Euphuistic  manner  and 
marks  a  step  forward  in  the  history  of  English  fiction  as  well 
as  in  English  prose.  In  a  word,  no  follower  of  Lyly  was  so 
purely  a  rhetorician  as  he,  and  no  one  wrote  his  story  so  un- 
abashedly for  its  moral  and  the  opportunities  which  it  offered 
to  discourse  at  large.  By  the  year  1590,  Euphuism  had  nearly 
worked  itself  out,  later  prose  preserving  only  "its  spirit  of 
scrupulous  neatness  .  .  .  with  an  occasional  use  of  bal- 
anced antithesis  and  alliteration."  Even  Lyly's  own  work  — 
we  have  only  prose  plays  from  which  to  judge  —  shows  a 
gradual  abandonment  of  his  favorite  devices  in  the  interest 
of  a  purer  and  less  conscious  style. 

Next  to  the  mistakes  about  Euphuism,  the  commonest 
misapprehension  as  to  Elizabethan  prose  is  that  which  groups 
the  prose  of  Sidney's  Arcadia  with  that  of  Lyly.  It  is  said 
that  every  educated  man  carries  about  with  him  a  definition 
of  poetry  of  his  own  making  and  adoration.  Without  raising 
a  question,  more  difficult  to  lay  than  a  ghost,  one  thing  may  be 
affirmed:  whatever  poetry  may  be,  it  is  never  rhetoric;  and 
where  rhetoric  abides  and  rules,  poetry  is  not.  Not  only  is 
Euphues  not  poetic,  but  Lyly's  plays  are  poetry  neither  in 
form  nor  in  spirit;  and  they  owe  their  success  to  much  the 
qualities  that  distinguish  his  other  prose.  The  late  Mr.  Hen- 
ley went  even  further,  to  deny  to  Lyly's  dainty  little  verses, 
"Cupid  and  my  Campaspe  played  at  cards  for  kisses,"  the 
title  of  a  lyric  and  to  class  it  with  epigrams.  The  essence  of 
Sidney's  work  is  his  poetry;  as  Professor  Dowden  less  fittingly 
said  of  Shelley,  "his  life,  deeds,  and  words  all  sang  together"; 
and  the  Arcadia  in  its  nature,  conduct,  style,  and  impetus  is  the 
complete  and  permanent  antithesis  of  Euphues  and  Euphuism. 
Nor  need  we  qualify  this  statement,  remembering  Sidney's 
experiments  in  exotic  poetical  forms  and  the  extraordinary 


42  THE  NEW  CULTIVATED   PROSE 

part  which  he  played  In  introducing  the  "conceit"  into  EngUsh 
poetry,  any  more  than  we  need  doubt  the  sincerity  of  any  true 
art  because  its  methods  are  ornate  and  ingenious. 

The  Countess  of  Pembroke's  Arcadia,  as  Sir  PhiHp  called 
his  romance,  was  written  during  his  retirement  in  partial  dis- 
grace with  the  queen,  in  1580.  It  was  addressed  to  his  intimate 
friends,  dedicated  to  his  sister,  and  never  intended  for  publi- 
cation. It  remained  in  manuscript  some  years  after  Sidney's 
death,  but  was  fortunately  not  destroyed  as  he  had  intended. 
In  1590  a  piratical  edition  appeared  and  fourteen  other  edi- 
tions followed  within  a  century.  The  Arcadia  was  thus  one 
of  the  most  popular  stories  of  the  age,  and  the  parent,  like 
Euphues,  of  a  long  line  of  prose  romances.  It  was  translated 
into  foreign  languages  and  used  as  material  for  other  writings 
at  home.  The  underplot  of  King  Lear,  to  mention  only  one 
example,  is  derived  from  an  episode  of  the  Arcadia,  that  of 
the  blind  king  of  Paphlagonia,  and  a  dozen  other  plays  levied 
upon  it. 

The  Arcadia  is  more  a  heroic  romance  than  a  pastoral. 
The  pastoral  atmosphere  of  the  earlier  parts  is  not  maintained. 
As  to  material,  Sidney's  story  is  the  very  opposite  o^  Euphues, 
being  rich  in  event,  stirring  in  adventure,  and  full  of  imagina- 
tion, sentiment,  and  poetry.  The  main  story  relates  the  for- 
tunes and  adventures  of  two  young  princes,  who  disguise  them- 
selves, the  one  as  an  Amazon,  the  other  as  a  shepherd,  to  win 
the  love  of  two  fair  princesses.  The  heroines  are  the  daughters 
of  Basilius,  a  king  whose  caution  for  their  welfare  and  future 
causes  him  to  remove  his  court  to  a  country  lodge.  The  course 
of  the  story  is  much  entangled  and  full  of  glorious  and  romantic 
adventure,  it  is  diversified  with  no  less  than  sev£n  episodes 
each  of  them  a  completely  wrought  story,  and  the  end  is  left 
to  the  reader's  imagination,  as  the  whole  is  unfinished.  Thus 
not  only  the  style  but  the  content  of  the  Arcadia  is  poeti- 
cal. It  was  one  of  the  prime  theories  of  Sidney  that  it  was  spirit 
and  not  form  which  made  poetry.  He  says:  "It  is  not  riming 
and  versing  that  maketh  a  poet,  no  more  than  a  long  gown 
maketh  an  advocate."  And  elsewhere:  Verse  is  "but  an 
ornament  and  no  cause  to  poetry:   sith  there  have  been  many 


ARCADIANISM  43 

most  excellent  poets  that  never  versified,  and  now  swarm  many 
versifiers  that  need  never  answer  to  the  name  of  poets."  In 
view  of  such  ideas  we  must  expect  to  find  a  close  relation  in 
Sidney's  Arcadia  between  the  subject-matter  and  the  form  of 
expression.  Arcadianism  is  then  not  only  a  prose  style,  but 
a  variety  of  the  art  of  fiction.  Sidney's  aim  is  the  "feigning 
notable  images  of  virtues,  vices,  or  what  else,  with  that  delight- 
ful teaching  which  must  be  the  right  describing  note  to  know 
a  poet  by."  Arcadianism  is  an  emotional  medium  for  the 
expression  of  lofty  and  heroic  thought.  If  we  consider  it  on 
the  side  of  mere  style,  the  diction  of  the  Arcadia  is  what  we 
might  expect  of  a  scholar  and  a  courtier.  It  is  thoroughly 
English  and  remarkably  free  from  words  which  have  since 
become  obsolete.  Compound  words  are  not  frequent  and 
poetical  words  can  not  be  considered  a  feature.  The  salient 
characteristics  of  the  Arcadian  style  are  its  habitual  employ- 
ment of  bold  and  natural  imagery  for  plain  and  direct  speech, 
in  the  extreme  degenerating  into  conceit;  the  use  of  antithesis 
with  accompanying  alliteration,  balance,  and  iteration  to  give 
emphasis  to  thought  and  feeling;  and  the  general  employment 
of  a  loose  and  cumulative  structure  of  sentence.  It  was  no 
vain  boast  of  the  age  to  declare  that  Sidney  had  reclaimed 
English  prose  from  the  excesses  of  the  cultivated  style.  The 
influence  of  the  Arcadia  was  more  permanent  than  that  of 
Euphuism,  if  less  easy  accurately  to  trace;  for  Sidney's  "bold 
feigning;  of  notable  images,"  even  his  striking  and  original 
"conceits,"  fell  in  with  the  spirit  of  a  poetical  and  imaginative 
age  as  no  rhetorician's  studied  devices  could  hope  to  do.  But 
who  can  deny  the  permanent  value  to  literature  of  these  con- 
sistent and  thorough  experiments  in  the  art  of  writing  elegant 
prose  ?  From  the  leading-strings  of  an  outworn  tongue,  from 
the  precedents  and  unchallenged  usages  of  "Tully,"  Euphues 
led  writers  to  a  contemplation  of  the  niceties  and  elegancies 
of  vernacular  English  and  taught  them  the  possibilities  of  their 
own  tongue.  Nor  was  this  education  confined  alone  to  the 
writers  of  books.  The  beauty  and  clarity  of  the  diction  of 
Elizabethan  letters,  even  of  documents,  not  too  much  clogged 
by  contact  with  the  law,  has  often  been  remarked.     Some  of 


44  THE  NEW   CULTIVATED   PROSE 

the  queen's  own  English  letters  show  a  grace  and  feeling  for 
the  phrase  which  we  may  be  sure,  with  all  Elizabeth's  natural 
endowments,  came  not  wholly  unstudied. 

It  was  a  fortunate  day  for  English  literature  that  both  in 
verse  and  in  prose  it  should  so  happily  have  passed  the  age  of 
experiment.  What  Sidney  did  for  foreign  meters  in  English 
verse,  Lyly  accomplished  for  English  prose.  Sidney  proved 
that  although  we  might  compass  the  hexameter,  the  sapphic, 
the  canzon,  or  the  madrigal  in  English,  it  would  be  better  to 
be  true  to  the  genius  and  spirit  of  English  verse.  Lyly  showed 
the  possibilities  of  a  highly  organized  and  rhetorical  style  in 
prose;  but,  living  longer  than  Sidney,  withdrew  from  its  ex- 
cesses himself  when  he  saw  growing  up  about  him  a  vigorous 
and  idiomatic  English  speech  alike  removed  from  the  pedantry 
of  Latinism  and  the  affectations  of  courtly  preciosity.  But 
the  lesson  that  Lyly  had  to  impart  once  learned,  it  was  in  the 
nature  of  the  Elizabethan  spirit  to  revert  to  the  more  spon- 
taneous, the  more  flowing  and  imaginative  prose  of  Sidney 
and  to  prefer  the  fine  abandon  of  his  tumultuous  eloquence  to 
the  nice  devices  of  Lyly's  ingenious  invention.  It  was  Mat- 
thew Arnold's  stricture  on  English  prose  at  large,  that  it  is  a 
prose  in  which  the  imagination  has  been  too  busy,  and  the 
rational  faculty  not  busy  enough.  This  criticism  finds  its 
earliest  justification  in  the  prose  of  Sidney  which  chose  rhet- 
oric for  its  antithesis,  not  for  its  example.  It  was  Lyly  who 
was  dainty,  artificial,  allegorical,  the  rhetorician  of  finished  art 
and  studied  phrase,  The  limit  of  such  literary  art  is  the 
epigram  and  beyond  this  it  can  not  attain.  Sidney,  in  con- 
trast to  all  this,  is  natural;  although  of  a  strong  artistic  bent, 
romantic  in  temper,  seeking  literature  as  an  outlet  to  feeling, 
not  as  an  art  to  be  loved  only  for  its  own  sake :  the  goal  of  such 
art  is  lyricism.  And  in  lyricism  the  barrier  between  prose  and 
poetry,  wherever  you  erect  it,  is  once  and  for  all  broken  down. 


CHAPTER    IV 
SPENSER,  "THE  NEW  POET" 

**''  I  ''HIS  place  have  I  purposely  reserved  for  one,"  wrote 
A  William  Webbe  in  1586,  "who  if  not  only,  yet  in  my 
judgment  principally,  deserveth  the  title  of  the  tightest  Eng- 
lish poet  that  ever  I  read.  That  is  the  author  of  The  Shep- 
herds* Calendar,  intituled  to  the  worthy  Master  Philip  Sidney, 
whether  it  was  Master  Spenser  or  what  rare  scholar  of  Pem- 
broke Hall  soever  ...  I  force  not  greatly  to  set  down. 
Sorry  I  am  that  I  can  not  find  none  other  with  whom  I  might 
couple  him  in  this  catalogue  in  his  rare  gift  of  poetry."  And 
even  earlier,  in  his  entertaining  "gloss"  to  the  Calendar,  "E. 
K.,"  the  poet's  friend,  had  declared:  "I  doubt  not  so  soon  as 
his  name  shall  come  to  the  knowledge  of  men  and  his  worthi- 
ness be  sounded  in  the  trump  of  fame  but  that  he  shall  .  . 
be  .  .  .  beloved  of  all,  embraced  of  the  most  and  won- 
dered at  of  the  best."  Seldom  has  a  poet  so  leaped  with  a 
bound  as  did  Spenser  into  the  esteem  and  appreciation  of  his 
countrymen;  and  even  more  rarely  has  such  a  feat  been 
accomplished  by  the  means  of  an  art  so  singularly  ideal  and 
free  from  the  transient  qualities  that  commonly  make  for  im- 
mediate poetic  repute. 

In  the  Prothalamion,  Spenser  has  recorded  London  as 
the  place  of  his  birth  and  nurture.  His  father's  family  was 
of  northeast  Lancashire,  numerous  and  respected  there  and 
elsewhere.  Thus  Spenser's  connections  were  good  and  he 
was  born,  if  humbly  for  his  station,  a  gentleman.  The  year 
of  his  birth  was  1552,  and  he  was  one  of  several  children.  He 
was  educated  at  the  Merchant  Tailors'  School,  then  newly 
founded  and  under  the  head-master,  Richard  Mulcaster,  a 
man  neither  unknown  to  the  history  of  education  nor  to  that 
of  the  drama.  The  future  dramatists,  Kyd  and  Lodge,  were 
among  his  schoolmates.     Spenser  was  the  recipient  of  bounty 

45 


46  SPENSER,  "THE   NEW   POET" 

granted  "to  certain  poor  scholars  of  the  schools  about 
London,"  and  went  up  to  Cambridge,  matriculating  as  a  sizar 
—  a  term  equivalent  to  servitor  at  Oxford  —  at  Pembroke 
College^  in  May,    1569. 

But  Spenser  had  appeared  in  print  even  before  he  vv^ent 
to  Cambridge.  The  Theater  of  Voluptuous  Worldings,  1 569, 
is  the  translation  of  a  moral  tract,  originally  in  Flemish  prose 
and  the  work  of  one  John  van  der  Noodt.  It  was  translated 
first  into  French  and  then  into  English.  Prefixed  were  a  score 
of  woodcuts  illustrating  certain  poems  of  Petrarch  and  Du 
Bellay  and  portraying  matter  more  or  less  relevant  to  the  moral 
tract.  Four  of  these  poems,  translations  of  Du  Bellay  into 
unrimed  decasyllabic  lines,  have  been  assigned  to  Spenser, 
because  in  a  collection  of  poems,  avowedly  his,  published  in 
1 59 1,  they  reappear  under  the  title,  Complaints,  with  certain 
revisions. 

Spenser's  works  disclose  that  he  acquired  at  college  not 
only  a  competent  knowledge  of  the  classics  but  a  very  consid- 
erable acquaintance  with  French  and  Italian  poetry.  As  to 
authors  in  his  own  tongue,  he  accepted  Chaucer  above  all 
as  an  inspiration  and  example;  although  Spenser's  temper- 
ament and  his  ideals  of  art  were  vastly  in  contrast  with  the 
robuster  genius  of  the  father  of  English  poetry.  Spenser's 
interest  in  Skelton  is  less  easy  to  explain,  although  the  poet  in 
Skelton  is  discoverable  to  him  who  will  seek  the  tiny  sweet 
kernel  within  the  thick  and  bitter  rind.  Among  Spenser's 
intimates  at  the  University  was  Gabriel  Harvey,  the  adviser 
of  the  Areopagus,  a  man  who  must  have  had  somewhat  in  him 
above  mere  pedantry  to  have  inspired  Spenser's  affection. 
Edward  Kirke,  too,  soon  to  introduce  to  the  public  The  Shep- 
herds^ Calendar,  must  have  been  close  to  the  poet  in  these 
early  days.  John  Still,  once  alleged  the  author  of  Gammer 
Gurtons  Needle,  and  Thomas  Preston,  the  author  of  that 
extraordinary  hotch-potch  of  moral,  history,  farce,  and  tragedy, 
Cambyses,  were  both  of  them  contemporary  with  Spenser  at 
Cambridge.  But  we  know  nothing  of  any  intimacy  of  Spenser 
with  them.     Nash  and  Marlowe  were  to  come  a  decade  later. 

Spenser  was  not  a  very  healthy  young  man;    and  he  left 


EARLY   POETICAL  VENTURES  47 

college,  after  taking  his  mastership  in  1576,  going  to  live  with 
his  own  people  in  Lancashire.  It  was  there  that  he  met  and 
loved  the  young  woman  celebrated  in  his  pastorals  as  Rosalind. 
Aubrey's  story  that  Rosalind  was  a  kinswoman  of  Sir  Erasmus 
Dryden,  the  grandfather  of  the  great  poet,  may  be  dismissed; 
and  a  more  recent  identification  of  the  lady  with  one  Rose 
Dyneley,  at  least  provisionally,  accepted.  Whatever  the  truth, 
it  is  certain  that  this  Rosalind  preferred  another,  not  Spenser, 
for  her  Orlando,  and  that  some  charming  and  plaintive  poetry 
was  the  result. 

The  circumstances  of  Spenser's  coming  up  to  London  to 
seek  his  fortune  are  not  altogether  clear.  Through  his  associ- 
ation with  Harvey  or  through  some  unknown  recommendation, 
he  gained  an  introduction  to  Sidney  and  a  place  in  the  house- 
hold of  the  Earl  of  Leicester  about  1578.  Between  this  and 
1580,  Spenser  appears  to  have  traveled  on  the  continent,  per- 
haps as  far  as  Rome,  and  also  into  Ireland  on  services  for  the 
earl.  These  were  the  days  of  growing  friendship  with  Sidney, 
who  loved  all  poets,  and  of  the  Areopagus  and  the  letters  inter- 
changed between  Harvey  and  Spenser  relative  to  the  new  clas- 
sical measures  in  English.  Spenser  seems  to  have  experimented, 
like  Sidney,  with  hexameters  and  other  ancient  forms  of  verse. 
We  hear  also  of  nine  comedies,  called  after  the  Muses  and 
written  after  the  manner  of  Ariosto,  of  a  poem  entitled  Dreams, 
prepared  for  the  press  with  a  comment  by  Kirke,  and  of  a  prose 
tract.  The  English  Poet,  apparently  in  the  nature  of  Sidney's 
Defense  of  Poesy.  But  all  have  been  irretrievably  lost.  Several 
other  poems  are  believed  to  have  been  recast  into  parts  of  The 
Faery  Queen  and  other  extant  poems.  In  December,  1579, 
The  Shepherds'  Calendar  was  entered  at  the  Stationers'  Com- 
pany. The  Faery  Queen,  likewise,  must  have  been  well  under 
way  before  Spenser  left  the  protection  of  Leicester  in  1580. 

It  is  a  remarkable  example  of  the  confidence  of  genius  that 
Spenser  should  deliberately  have  set  himself  against  several 
of  the  fashions  of  his  day,  notwithstanding  that  he  was  more 
or  less  affected  by  them.  Although  his  natural  affinities  were 
with  Harvey  and  the  classicists,  Spenser's  good  sense  and  mu- 
sical ear  saved  him  from  the  absurdities  of  the  attempt  to  in- 


48  SPENSER,   "THE   NEW    POET" 

troduce  classic  meters  into  English.  But  it  was  not  only  from 
pedantry  that  he  rescued  himself.  Though  full  of  the  spirit 
of  the  Italian  Renaissance  in  its  larger  embodiments  as  repre- 
sented in  the  epics  of  Tasso  and  Ariosto,  Spenser  had  little  in 
common  with  the  Italianated  style  that  dealt  in  "dainty  an- 
tithesis and  alliteration,  ingenuity  of  simile,"  and  far-fetched 
comparison.  Spenser  held  "the  laboriously  small  literature" 
of  Italy  in  undisguised  disdain.  In  consequence  of  this  feeling 
he  even  dared  to  employ  at  times  Chaucer's  obsolete  language 
in  protest  against  the  foreign  words  which  were  at  the  moment 
crowding  into  English.  Other  motives,  too,  led  Spenser  to  a 
love  of  antiquated  expressions.  There  is  a  charm  about  the 
unusual,  especially  in  sound,  which  the  ear  of  Spenser,  attuned 
to  musical  impressions,  found  it  difficult  to  resist.  Unques- 
tionably Spenser  abused  at  times  his  mastery  over  language 
and,  though  he  rarely  invented  new  words,  he  frequently  dis- 
torted old  ones.  It  has  been  held  that  many  of  his  alleged 
archaisms  are  really  referable  to  actual  provincial  usage  in  the 
Lancashire  of  his  day,  and  that  more  of  them  may  be  otherwise 
justified.  But  when  all  has  been  said,  Spenser  must  be  ac- 
knowledged much  of  a  tyrant  over  words,  twisting  and  con- 
torting, at  times,  his  pitiable  subjects  at  his  royal  will.  In 
this  Spenser  differed  immeasurably  from  Shakespeare  who  ex- 
tended a  beneficent  rule  over  thousands  of  subjects  in  the  world 
of  speech  that  had  remained  hitherto  unreduced  to  citizenship 
in  the  realm  of  literary  acceptance. 

The  Shepherds^  Calendar,  "containing  twelve  allegories 
proportionable  to  the  twelve  months,"  was  registered  in  De- 
cember, 1579,  dedicated  "to  the  noble  and  virtuous  gentleman, 
most  worthy  of  all  titles  both  of  learning  and  chivalry.  Master 
Philip  Sidney,"  and  modestly  signed  "Immerito."  The  Dedi- 
catory Epistle  to  Harvey  was  written  by  E.  K.,  that  is  Edward 
Kirke,  Spenser's  friend  at  college,  who  also  supplied  the  quaint 
"gloss"  or  running  comment  that  accompanies  the  text.  The 
Shepherds'  Calendar  is  the  first  successful  attempt  to  write 
poetical  pastoral  eclogues  in  English.  Spenser  appears  to  have 
found  his  inspiration  in  the  pastorals  of  Battista  Spagnuoli, 
commonly  known  as  Mantuan,  one  of  the  foremost  Latin  poets 


"THE   SHEPHERDS*   CALENDAR"  49 

of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  and  in  those  of  Clement  Marot, 
a  French  religious  free-lance  who  was  alternately  in  favor  and 
exiled  from  the  courts  of  Marguerite  d'Alen9on  and  Francis  I. 
But  the  pastoral  mode  had  already  crept  into  England  in 
Alexander  Barclay's  satirical  and  allusive  Eclogues,  1513,  and 
in  those  of  Barnabe  Googe,  1563,  who,  as  well  as  Turberville, 
had  translated  pastorals  of  Mantuan  into  English;  while  long 
before  the  Scottish  poet,  Robert  Henryson,  had  set  a  standard 
of  idyllic  excellence  in  his  perfect  little  poem,  Rohyn  and 
Makyne  (albeit  likewise  of  French  extraction),  which  none 
was  to  equal  save  Marlowe,  Breton,  and  Lodge  in  times  to 
come. 

Notwithstanding  that  The  Shepherds'  Calendar  is  thus 
imitative  of  foreign  poets,  written  in  a  mode  which  seems 
strained  and  artificial  to  us  to-day,  and  weighted  by  a  conserv- 
ative adherence  to  an  archaic  vocabulary  and  an  obsolete 
system  of  rhythm  in  parts,  the  poem  was  an  immediate  success, 
and  Spenser  was  enthusiastically  hailed  as  "the  new  poet" 
in  a  chorus  of  praise.  Spenser  lived  to  see  five  editions  of  the 
Calendar.  It  was  translated  into  Latin  by  John  Dove  in  1585, 
and  commended  by  critics  like  Webbe  and  Nash,  by  personal 
friends  such  as  Sidney,  and  fellow  poets  like  Drayton.  And 
indeed  in  the  Calendar  we  recognize  at  once  the  presence  of  a 
consummate  artist,  a  powerful  grasp  of  ideas,  a  pictorial  and 
vivid  style,  and  an  extraordinary  power  over  metrical  form  in 
calling  forth  the  music  of  the  language.  Already  we  find 
Spenser's  fondness  for  allegory  asserting  itself  in  the  person- 
ages of  these  eclogues.  Colin  is  Spenser  himself;  Hobbinol, 
his  friend  Harvey;  Menalcas,  the  fortunate  rival  of  the  poet 
for  the  hand  of  Rosalind. 

But  The  Shepherds'  Calendar  is  more  than  a  set  of  eclogues 
on  amorous  and  trifling  subjects.  It  contains  underneath  a 
thin  disguise  of  pastoral  form,  a  deep  undercurrent  of  sturdy 
and  independent  opinion.  For  example  Archbishop  Grindal, 
as  the  wise  shepherd  Algrind,  receives  Spenser's  unstinted 
praise.  Grindal  had  set  himself  in  opposition  to  the  court 
in  an  attempt  to  educate  and  liberalize  the  clergy,  and  had 
manfully  refused  to  yield  to  the  queen  on  what  he  considered 


50  SPENSER,  "THE   NEW    POET" 

a  question  of  conscience.  It  was  a  brave  thing  for  the  young 
poet,  awaiting  preferment,  to  speak  so  boldly  as  he  did  on  the 
side  of  liberality  and  justice.  This  conduct  was  of  a  piece 
with  the  candor  of  Spenser's  later  satire  of  the  courtly  delay 
and  corruption  of  the  time  which  he  voices  in  his  excellent 
satirical   poem,  Mother  Hubherd's   Tale,  and  elsewhere. 

The  Shepherds'  Calendar  and  the  Arcadia  set  the  pastoral 
fashion,  and  thereafter  this  became  for  a  decade  or  more  the 
prevailing  literary  mode.  This  mode  was  common  to  verse 
and  prose,  to  the  epic,  dramatic,  and  lyric  form,  and  it  mingled 
with  every  other  conceivable  manner  of  writing  which  the  teem- 
ing inventivenesss  of  an  age  that  doted  on  originality  could 
bring  forth.  The  Arcadia  had  contained  pastoral  lyrics;  but 
the  lyrics  o(The  Shepherds'  Calendar  may  have  preceded  them. 
It  is  somewhat  strange  that  Spenser  should  never  have  written 
pastoral  or  other  lyric  for  itself.  The  "Song  to  Eliza,"  "  Peri- 
got  and  Willie's  Roundelay,"  and  the  majestic  "Lament  for 
Dido,"  all  included  in  their  variety  of  beautiful  meters  in  the 
Calendar,  disclose  how  varied  and  perfect  was  Spenser's 
lyrical  art.  Yet  in  them  all,  as  in  the  glorious  poetry  of  the 
Prothalamion  and  the  Epithalamion,  we  have  the  large  and 
leisurely  poetical  utterance  so  distinctive  of  Spenser.  Spenser 
has  none  of  the  brevity,  the  concentration,  the  concrete  expres- 
fsiveness,  the  short  holding  phrase  that  distinguishes  the  best 
of  Elizabethan  lyrists.  Rarely  can  he  catch  with  the  instinct 
of  some  lesser  men  the  fleeting  joy  or  sorrow  of  the  moment. 
Spenser's  Muse  is  like  some  stately  galleon  of  the  age,  built 
high  above  the  water,  bearing  on  in  stately  course,  her  bil- 
lowy sails  all  set  and  gay  with  a  thousand  floating  pennons. 
She  needs  the  broad  ocean  for  her  course,  but  she  is  a  gallant 
sight  to  behold,  and  little  pinnaces  shrink  before  her  regal 
progress. 

In  July,  1580,  Spenser  was  appointed  secretary  to  Arthur 
Grey  de  Wilton,  Lord  Deputy  of  Ireland,  and  accompanied 
him  to  Dublin.  Although  Spenser  returned  to  England  for 
two  brief  visits,  Ireland  thenceforth  became  his  home,  until 
the  rebellion  drove  him  back  to  London  as  a  refuge  shortly 
before  his  death.     The  successive  posts  and  employments  in 


LIFE   IN  IRELAND  51 

the  service  of  the  government  held  by  Spenser  we  need  not 
detail  here.  He  was  for  some  years  Clerk  of  Chancery  (1581- 
1588),  and  later  clerk  of  the  Council  of  Munster  (i 588-1594). 
He  was  well  paid  for  his  services  to  the  crown,  and  acquired 
at  different  times  a  considerable  landed  estate,  living,  amongst 
other  places,  at  New  Abbey  in  county  Kildare,  and  at  Kil- 
colman  Castle,  near  to  Doneraile  in  county  Cork.  Nor  was 
Spenser  without  associates  in  Ireland.  There  were  then  as 
now  many  cultivated  gentlemen  on  what  may  be  called  the 
civil  list  of  the  colonial  office.  One  Lodowick  Bryskett,  a 
fellow  Irish  official,  became  an  intimate  friend  of  Spenser's. 
Bryskett  was  of  Italian  extraction,  and  had  traveled  on  the 
continent  as  the  companion  of  Sidney.  His  Discourse  of  Civil 
Life,  1606,  the  translation  of  an  Italian  philosophical  work, 
has  a  peculiar  interest  from  his  description  in  it  of  a  party  of 
literary  friends  who  met  at  his  cottage  near  Dublin,  chief 
among  them  Spenser.  Here  Bryskett  tells  how  Spenser  en- 
couraged him  "long  sithence  to  follow  the  reading  of  the  Greek 
tongue,  and  offered  me  his  help  to  make  me  understand  it"; 
how  he  requested  Spenser  to  discourse  to  the  party  of  moral 
philosophy     .  "whereby    virtues    are    to    be    distin- 

guished from  vices";  and  how  Spenser  excused  himself  on  the 
plea  that  he  had  already  undertaken  "a  work  tending  to  the 
same  effect."  Another  intimacy,  the  outcome  of  Spenser's 
life  in  Ireland,  was  the  friendship  of  Walter  Raleigh,  the 
"Shepherd  of  the  Ocean"  oi  Colin  Clout.  Raleigh  lived  not 
far  from  Spenser  and  visited  him  at  Castle  Kilcolman.  To 
him  on  one  of  these  visits  Spenser  submitted  the  first  three 
books  of  the  The  Faery  Queen;  and  Raleigh,  delighted  with 
the  work,  induced  Spenser  to  return  to  England  to  seek  a 
publisher.  This  Spenser  did,  arriving  in  London  in  October, 
1589,  about  the  time  that  Shakespeare  was  beginning  his 
apprenticeship  to  the  stage.  All  this  matter  and  Spenser's 
own  delight  in  the  gracious  reception  which  he  met  at  court 
from  Cynthia  and  her  maids  is  charmingly,  allegorically,  and 
pastorally  set  forth  in  Colin  Clonics  Come  Home  Again,  printed 
in  1595.  Spenser  arranged  for  the  publication  of  the  first 
three  books  of  The  Faery  Queen,  and  in  1 590  they  appeared 


52  SPENSER,  "THE  NEW   POET" 

with  the  dignified  and  graceful  dedication  to  Queen  Ehzabeth, 
the  well-known  prefatory  letter  to  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  de- 
claring the  intention  of  the  author,  and  numerous  sonnets  to 
illustrious  people  who  had  shown  favor  to  the  poet.       ^n  lie''"«- 

Spenser's  literary  triumph  was  all  that  he  could  wish;  but 
he  did  not  succeed  in  getting  employment  which  would  remove 
him  from  savage  Ireland  and  bring  him  nearer  the  court.  He, 
too,  experienced  the  delays  and  doubts  of  attendance  on  royal 
favor.  According  to  a  well-known  anecdote  Elizabeth  was  so 
pleased  with  The  Faery  Queen  —  as  well  she  might  be,  for 
never  has  woman  been  so  royally  flattered  —  that  she  deter- 
mined to  give  Spenser  a  pension  of  five  hundred  pounds  per 
annum,  a  large  and  munificent  gift,  considering  the  purchasing 
value  of  money  in  that  age.  But  Burleigh  demurred  that  so 
much  money  should  be  paid  for  a  song.  The  queen  then  told 
her  thrifty  secretary  to  give  Spenser  what  in  his  judgment  he 
thought  was  fit  for  a  poet,  and  the  pension  was  granted  at 
fifty  pounds.  This  is  the  basis  of  the  notion  that  Spenser 
was  poet  laureate.  The  office  did  not  exist  in  Spenser's  day, 
nor  in  Daniel's,  the  unofficial  successor  of  Spenser  to  the  favors 
of  the  court.     Ben  Jonson  was  the  first  poet  laureate. 

In  a  well-known  passage  of  Colin  Clout,  Spenser  touches 
on  his  poetical  contemporaries  with  generous  appreciative 
comment.  Each  poet  is  veiled,  after  the  fashion  of  the  time, 
under  a  pastoral  name,  and  among  them  Spenser  certainly 
mentions  Alabaster,  Churchyard,  Raleigh,  Daniel,  Sidney, 
and  some  minor  writers,  while  the  surmises  of  scholars  have 
considerably  extended  the  list  of  identifications.  The  whole 
passage  concludes: 

And  there,  though  last  not  least,  is  ^Etion, 
A  gentler  shepherd  may  no  where  be  found: 
Whose  Muse,  full  of  high  thoughts'  invention, 
Doth  like  himself  heroically  sound. 
All  these,  and  many  others  moe,  remain, 
Now  after  Astrophel  is  dead  and  gone: 
But  while  as  Astrophel  did  live  and  reign, 
Amongst  all  these  was  none  his  paragon. 


"COLIN  CLOUT"  53 

All  these  do  flourish  in  their  sundry  kind, 

And  do  their  Cynthia  immortal  make: 

Yet  found  I  liking  in  her  royal  mind, 

Not  for  my  skill,  but  for  that  shepherd's  sake. 

Astrophel  is  of  course  Sidney  whose  memory  Spenser  every- 
where reveres.  It  was  becoming  and  courtier-like  in  Spenser 
thus  to  attribute  the  royal  recognition  to  his  friendship  with 
Sidney  and  not  to  his  own  poetic  merit.  As  to  ^Etion,  the 
adjective  "gentle"  in  this  passage  immediately  suggests 
Shakespeare.  We  may  not  always  remember  that  the  epithet 
is  Jonson's,  to  be  found  with  a  dozen  other  good  things  about 
the  great  dramatist  in  the  famous  lines  prefixed  to  the  first 
folio  edition  of  Shakespeare's  works.  "Gentle"  is  now  once 
and  for  all  the  Shakespearean  epithet,  and  the  heroically 
sounding  Muse  of  this  passage  has  been  applied  to  him  (Shake- 
speare). But  it  has  also  been  applied  to  Sack-ville;  and  it  is 
equally  applicable  to  Rowland,  the  self-assumed  pseudonym 
of  Michael  Drayton,  a  poet  who  must  have  been  well  known 
to  Spenser  in  1595.  It  must  be  confessed  that  Shakespeare 
—  a  player  and  only  on  sufferance  acquainted  with  men  of 
Spenser's  court  circle  —  was  certainly  unlikely  to  be  so  ad- 
dressed by  "the  new  poet"  in  the  year  1595,  the  year  after  the 
earliest  heir  of  Shakespeare's  invention  had  seen  the  press. 
And  yet  the  two  greatest  poets  of  the  age  may  have  met.  If 
they  did  into  what  insignificance  fall  the  royal  fields  of  cloth  of 
gold  and  other  ceremonious  meetings  of  august  worldly  sov- 
ereigns. Did  Spenser  find  "our  Shakespeare"  truly  gentle? 
And  was  Spenser  to  Shakespeare  the  "poet's  poet.''" 

In  1590  appeared  Daphnaida,  an  elegy  on  Lady  Douglas, 
and  a  volume  entitled  Complaints.  Strange  as  it  must  seem 
to  us,  some  of  the  matter  of  Muiopotmos,  an  allegorical  story 
of  the  proud  butterfly  swept  into  a  spider's  web,  and  the  satiri- 
cal beast  epic.  Mother  Huhherd's  Tale  gave  offense,  and  part 
of  the  work  was  suppressed.  The  publishers^  promise  of  an- 
other volume  of  small  poems  was  never  fulfilled. 

In  1592  Spenser  fell  in  love  once  more  and  wooed  and  won 
for  his  wife  Elizabeth  Boyle,  a  woman  of  position  and  culti- 


54  SPENSER,  "THE    NEW  POET" 

vation,  well  worthy  of  the  poet's  addresses.  Spenser's  beauti- 
ful sonnet  sequence,  Amoretti,  is,  in  part  at  least,  the  poetical 
record  of  this  courtship.  The  Epithalamion  which  celebrated 
his  marriage,  in  June,  1594,  has  been  truly  described  as  "one 
of  the  grandest  lyrics  in  English  poetry."  These  two  works 
were  printed  in  1595,  as  was  Colin  Clout;  and  at  the  close  of 
this  year  Spenser  brought  three  more  hooks  oi  T he F aery  Queen 
to  London  and  they  appeared  the  next  year.  Once  more  was 
Spenser  received  by  the  best  people  of  England,  staying  at 
Essex  House  with  the  earl,  and  penning  the  fine  Prothalamion 
for  a  double  wedding  held  there.  Spenser  was  also  engaged 
during  this  visit  in  writing  his  prose  tract,  A  View  of  the  Present 
State  of  Ireland.  This  clear  and  able  paper  of  state  is  marred 
by  its  attitude  which  allows  no  rights  to  the  down-trodden 
Irish.  The  gentle  and  kindly  poet  was  one  of  the  English 
invaders  that  approved  and  even  took  part  in  the  raids  of 
devastation  that  wasted  unhappy  Ireland.  He  was  also  one 
of  those  who  was  rewarded  with  the  confiscated  estates  of 
rebels,  a  reward  which  was  to  bring  to  him  a  speedy  and  ter- 
rible retribution.  In  an  examination  of  the  social  culture  and 
civilization  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  we  must  not  forget  that 
much  of  the  last  was  as  yet  superficial.  Bear-baiting  and  bull- 
baiting  were  no  uncommon  amusements,  to  say  nothing  of 
cock-fighting,  in  praise  of  which  worthy  Roger  Ascham  wrote 
a  book,  unhappily  now  lost.  Those  who  delight  in  what  they 
choose  to  call  historical  "realism,"  have  been  at  pains  to  tell 
us  how  Queen  Elizabeth  used  to  beat  her  maids  of  honor,  and 
how  she  actually  boxed  my  Lord  of  Essex  on  the  ears  one  day 
when  she  was  scolding  him,  a  chastisement  which  the  young 
coxcomb  doubtless  richly  deserved.  Add  to  this  the  habit  of 
public  execution,  drawing  and  quartering,  and  the  exhibition 
of  heads  and  mangled  limbs  on  the  parapet  of  London  Bridge, 
and  we  have  illustrations  alike  of  the  childish  petulance  of  the 
queen  and  of  the  brutality  of  the  age. 

In  Elizabeth's  day  the  Irish  were  little  better  than  savages. 
They  had  been  given  no  opportunity  to  become  civilized, 
and  were  not  eager  to  seize  one.  They  continued,  as  they 
have  to  our  own  day,  the  objects  of  the  injustice  and  rapacity 


CONTEMPORARY  REPUTE  55 

of  their  more  powerful  neighbor.  To  Spenser,  Ireland  was 
a  horrible  but  beautiful  wilderness,  whose  beauties  and  his 
own  loneliness  among  them  he  both  celebrates  and  deplores. 
He  detested  the  Irish  as  an  inferior  race.  Neither  his  age 
nor  his  position  could  make  his  judgment  in  this  matter  fair. 
As  a  man  we  know  Spenser  to  have  been  kindly,  gentle,  and 
estimable,  with  few  of  the  weaknesses  vulgarly  attributed  to 
poets.  It  is  no  small  credit  to  the  taste  of  the  Elizabethan  age 
that  their  contemporaries  gave  to  Shakespeare  and  to  Spenser 
that  rank  to  which  it  was  left  to  comparatively  modern  appreci- 
ation to  restore  them.  Spenser  was  as  highly  honored  by  the 
queen  as  could  be  expected,  considering  his  birth  and  the  fact 
that  he  exhibited  no  very  marked  political  qualifications. 
As  to  his  flattery  of  her,  it  was  a  mere  fabric  of  imaginative 
gallantry  and  devotion,  the  result  of  a  grateful  and  loyal  nature. 
How  manly  after  all,  is  his  greatest  piece  of  flattery,  the  dedica- 
tion of  The  Faery  Queen,  and  what  a  glorious  assumption  of 
equality  it  conveys:  "To  the  most  high,  mighty,  and  magnifi- 
cent empress,  renowned  for  piety,  virtue  and  all  gracious 
government  Elizabeth,  by  the  grace  of  God,  Queen  of  England, 
France,  and  Ireland,  and  of  Virginia,  Defender  of  the  faith, 
her  most  humble  servant,  Edmund  Spenser,  doth  in  all  humil- 
ity dedicate,  present,  and  consecrate  these  his  labors  to  live 
with  the  eternit}'  of  her  fame.  " 

In  1597  Spenser  returned  to  Ireland  in  failing  health. 
He  was  appointed  sheriff"  of  Cork;  and  in  the  year  following, 
the  Tyrone  Rebellion  broke  out.  The  English  were  taken 
unawares,  massacre  and  outrage  followed.  In  October  of 
that  year  Kilcolman  Castle  was  sacked  and  burnt,  and  Spenser 
fled  to  Cork  with  his  wife  and  four  children.  According  to 
Jonson,  one  of  his  children  perished  in  the  flames.  In 
December  Spenser  came  to  London,  the  bearer  of  dispatches 
from  Sir  Thomas  Norris,  governor  of  Munster,  and  died  at 
an  inn  in  Westminster  the  next  month,  January,  1599.  The 
tradition  goes  that  he  died  in  poverty.  It  seems  improbable, 
however,  that  the  holder  of  a  crown  pension  and  bearer  of 
official  dispatches,  so  well  known  and  honored  as  Spenser, 
should  so  have  perished.     He  was  ruined  in  a  sense  by  the 


56  SPENSER,  "THE  NEW   POET" 

destruction  of  his  Irish  castle  and  the  spoiHng  of  his  estate. 
This  is  the  origin  of  the  story.  Spenser's  funeral  was  sump- 
tuous, and  attended  by  the  poets  and  the  nobility.  He  was 
buried  in  Westminster  Abbey  near  to  Chaucer. 

And  now  as  to  Spenser's  famous  book.  The  Faery  Queen. 
Fortunately  for  our  understanding  of  its  scope  and  meaning, 
we  have  Spenser's  own  interesting  letter  to  Raleigh.  Therein 
we  learn  that  The  Faery  Queen  is  "a  continued  allegory  or 
dark  conceit,"  and  that  "the  general  end  thereof  .  .  .  is  to 
fashion  a  gentleman  or  noble  person  in  virtuous  and  gentle 
discipline." 

Which  for  that  I  conceived  should  be  most  plausible  and  pleasing, 
being  colored  with  an  historical  fiction,  the  which  the  most  part  of 
men  delight  to  read  rather  for  variety  of  matter  than  for  profit  of 
the  ensample,  I  chose  the  history  of  King  Arthur,  as  most  fit  for  the 
excellency  of  his  person,  being  made  famous  by  many  men's  former 
works,  and  also  furthest  from  the  danger  of  envy  and  suspicion  of 
present  time. 

After  naming  as  his  examples  Homer,  Vergil,  Tasso,  and 
Ariosto,  Spenser  continues: 

By  ensample  of  which  excellent  poets,  I  labor  to  portray  in  Arthur, 
before  he  was  king,  the  image  of  a  brave  knight,  perfected  in  the  twelve 
private  moral  virtues,  as  Aristotle  hath  devised;  the  which  is  the 
purpose  of  these  first  twelve  books,  which  if  I  find  to  be  well  accepted, 
I  may  be  perhaps  encouraged  to  frame  the  other  part  of  politic  vir- 
tues in  bis  person  after  that  he  came  to  be  king. 

Then  follows  a  justification  of  the  allegorical  method  and 
an  explanation  of  how  Arthur  saw  "in  a  dream  or  vision  the 
Faery  Queen^  with  whose  excellent  beauty  ravished,  he 
awaking,  resolved  to  seek  her  out;  and  so  being  by  Merlin 
armed,  he  went  to  seek  her  forth  in  faery  land. " 

In  that  Faery  Queen  I  mean  glory  in  my  general  intention,  but 
in  my  particular  I  conceive  the  most  excellent  and  glorious  person  of 
our  sovereign  the  queen  and  her  kingdom  in  faery  land.  And  yet, 
in  some  places  else  I  do  otherwise  shadow  her.  For  considering  she 
beareth  two  persons,  the  one  of  a  most  royal  queen  or  empress,  the 
other  of  a  most  virtuous  and  beautiful  lady,  this  latter  part  in  some 


"THE   FAERY  QUEEN"  57 

places  I  do  express  in  Belphcebe,  fashioning  her  name  according  to 
your  own  excellent  conceit  of  Cynthia,  Phoebe  and  Cynthia  being 
both  names  of  Diana. 

It  will  thus  be  seen  how  this  elaborate  plan  carries  out 
the  idea,  already  suggested  in  Spenser's  words  to  Lodowick 
Bryskett  "to  represent  all  the  moral  virtues,  assigning  to 
every  virtue  a  knight  to  be  the  patron  and  defender  of  the 
same,  in  whose  actions  and  feats  of  arms  and  chivalry  the 
operations  of  that  virtue  whereof  he  is  the  protector  are  to 
be  expressed,  and  the  vices  and  unruly  appetites  that  oppose 
themselves  against  the  same  to  be  beaten  down  and  overcome. " 
This  stupendous  plan  was  never  completed.  The  six  finished 
books  give  the  legend  (each  in  twelve  cantos,  averaging  fifty 
or  sixty  stanzas  each)  of  Holiness,  Temperance,  Chastity, 
Friendship,  Justice,  and  Courtesy;  while  a  fragment  of  two 
"Cantos  on  Mutability"  is  supposed  to  have  belonged  to 
a  seventh  book  (not  necessarily  seventh  in  order)  on  Con- 
stancy. The  legend  that  The  Faery  Queen  was  actually- 
finished  may  be  dismissed  as  improbable.  The  poem  as  it 
stands  contains  about  four  thousand  stanzas,  or  between 
thirty  and  forty  thousand  verses,  and  is  of  a  quality  of  sus- 
tained poetical  excellence,  unequaled  in  any  other  poem  of 
the  language. 

As  The  Faery  Queen  remains  to  us,  it  is  like  some  fragment 
of  ancient  sculpture,  the  more  beautiful  from  its  incomplete- 
ness. However,  such  is  its  exquisite  detail  and  such  its  chain- 
like quality  of  unity  in  continuance,  that  it  is  probable  that 
we  are  not  much  the  losers  by  this.  Indeed,  with  all  its 
elaborate  plan.  The  Faery  Queen  must  be  pronounced  one  of 
the  most  plotless  epics  in  existence.  Moreover  the  narrative, 
despite  its  graces  and  variety,  is  repetitious,  if  continuous; 
and  whether  we  "prick  o'er  the  plain"  with  the  Knight  of 
Holiness,  descend  with  Sir  Guyon  to  the  caves  of  Mammon, 
or  follow  Sir  Arthegal's  aquatic  duel  with  the  Paynim  PoUente, 
again  and  again  recur  the  seemly  images  of  knightly  prowess, 
the  brave  encounters,  the  contrasted  braggadocio  or  caitiff 
knights,  the  fair  disconsolate  virgins,  Una-like,  and  the  Vivian- 
like Duessas,  all-seeming  fair  but  foul  within.     I  never  read 


58  SPENSER,  "THE  NEW    POET" 

The  Faery  Queen  without  thinking  of  those  rare  and  costly- 
tapestries  which  decked  in  ancient  days  the  halls  of  princes. 
Here  is  the  same  soft  richness  of  color  and  of  texture,  the 
dim  remoteness  to  anything  like  actual  life,  the  delicate  care 
of  detail,    and   the   same   enchanting   decorative   effect.     Of 
such  art  we  feel  that  it  is  loving  and  leisurely;  its  very  progress 
is  like  that  of  the  shuttle  in  the  loom,  now  forward,  now  back. 
Neither  weaver  nor  poet  can  be  conceived  as  hurried  or  as 
otherwise  than  content  to  add,  hour  after  hour  and  thread 
after  thread,  the  beautiful  colors  that  grow  insensibly  into  a 
pattern,  ever  recurrent  and   conventional,  but  ever  holding, 
as  with  a  soft  compulsion,  our  approval  and  affection.     Take 
these  stanzas,  some  three  of  many  more,  descriptive  of  Bel- 
phoebe,  type  of  virgin  perfection  and  sufficiency: 
Eftsoon,  there  stepped  forth 
A  goodly  lady  clad  in  hunter's  weed, 
That  seem'd  to  be  a  woman  of  great  worth, 
And  by  her  stately  portance  born  of  heavenly  birth. 

Her  face  so  fair,  as  flesh  it  seemed  not. 
But  heavenly  portrait  of  bright  angel's  hue, 
Clear  as  the  sky,  withouten  blame  or  blot, 
Through  goodly  mixture  of  complexions  due; 
And  in  her  cheeks  the  vermeil  red  did  shew 
Like  roses  in  a  bed  of  lilies  shed. 
The  which  ambrosial  odors  from  them  threw, 
And  gazer's  sense  with  double  pleasure  fed, 
Able  to  heal  the  sick  and  to  revive  the  dead. 

In  her  fair  eyes  two  living  lamps  did  flame, 
Kindled  above  in  th'  Heavenly  Maker's  light, 
And  darted  fiery  beams  out  of  the  same, 
So  passing  piersant,  and  so  wondrous  bright, 
In  them  the  blinded  god  his  lustful  fire 
To  kindle  oft  essayed,  but  had  no  might; 
For  with  dread  majesty  and  awful  ire, 
She  broke  his  wanton  darts  and  quenched  base  desire. 

Her  ivory  forehead,  full  of  bounty  brave. 
Like  a  broad  table  did  itself  dispread, 
For  love  his  lofty  triumphs  to  engrave. 
And  write  the  battles  of  his  great  godhead: 


"THE  FAERY  QUEEN"  59 

All  good  and  honor  might  therein  be  read; 
For  there  their  dwelling  was.     And  when  she  spake, 
Sweet  words,  like  dropping  honey,  she  did  shed; 
And  'twixt  the  pearls  and  rubies  softly  brake 
A  silver  sound  that  heavenly  music  seemed  to  make. 

No  wonder  that  it  was  once  profanely  said  that  nothing 
but  Spenser's  death  could  possibly  have  prevented  The  Faery 
Queen  from  going  on  in  the  same  bloom,  fragrance,  and  vital- 
ity forever. 

Two  allegories  underlie  the  story  of  The  Faery  Queen,  one 
figuring  forth  abstract  virtues  and  religious  qualitites,  the 
other  the  concrete  presentation  of  the  same.  Thus  the  Red- 
Cross  Knicrht  of  the  first  book  signifies  Holiness  in  the  abstract. 
In  the  concrete  this  figure  stands,  somevphat  unfittingly,  for 
the  Earl  of  Leicester.  Belphcebe,  the  Virgin  Warrior,  is 
militant  Chastity  in  the  abstract;  but,  like  all  unwedded  and 
feminine  abstractions  of  the  age,  in  the  concrete  is  Queen 
Elizabeth.  The  allegory  of  The  Faery  Queen  is  sometimes 
moral,  sometimes  political,  sometimes  religious  and  even 
personal,  although  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Spenser  not 
infrequentl)^  avoided  the  possibility  of  too  close  an  identifica- 
tion. With  this  uncertainty  as  to  Spenser's  personages. 
The  Faery  Queen  has  been  most  happily  compared  to  a  wide 
landscape,  viewed  from  a  point  of  vantage  on  one  of  those  days 
when,  although  the  heavens  are  fair,  the  mist  is  driving  in 
from  time  to  time  from  the  sea.  As  you  look  out  over  the 
plain,  you  see  some  village,  apparently  familiar;  but  before 
you  identify  the  spire  on  its  church,  down  sweeps  the  mist 
and  the  baffling  semi-luminous  cloud  covers  all.  In  the  read- 
ing of  the  poetry  of  Spenser  we  may  well  follow  the  witty 
suggestion  of  one  of  his  fellow  poets.  "Poetry,"  says  Sir 
John  Harington,  "is  one  kind  of  meat  to  feed  divers  tastes. 
For  the  weaker  capacities  will  feed  themselves  with  the  pleas- 
antness of  the  history  and  the  sweetness  of  the  verse;  some 
that  have  stronger  stomachs  will,  as  it  were,  take  a  further 
taste  of  the  moral  sense;  and  a  third  sort,  more  high  conceited 
than  they,  will  digest  the  allegory. " 

Nothing  is  more  erroneous  than  to  suppose  that  Spenser 


6o  SPENSER,   "THE   NEW   POET" 

borrowed  his  perfect  stanza  of  The  Faery  Queen  from  the 
Italian.  The  sonnet  and  the  famous  ottava  rima  (a  b  a  b  a  b 
c  c)  were  both  used  by  Spenser  and  may  have  suggested,  be- 
tween them,  the  advantage  of  a  long  and  well-knit  stanza. 
A  more  likely  original  than  either  of  these  is  to  be  found  in 
Chaucer's  rime  royal  (a  b  a  b  b  c  c),  used  in  Troilus  and 
Cresside  especialiy,which  by  the  insertion  of  a  line(fl  b  ab  b  c  b  c) 
between  the  last  two  verses  becomes  Chaucer's  stanza  of 
The  Monk's  Tale.  One  step  more,  the  addition  of  the  final 
alexandrine,  and  we  have  the  Spenserian  stanza  (a  b  a  b  b  c 
b  c  c).  But  this  step  was  a  great  and  original  one,  and  takes 
Spenser's  stanza  out  of  the  group  of  "five  stress"  verses, 
giving  it  a  character  entirely  new.  The  Spenserian  stanza 
is  Spenser's  own,  and  is  certainly  to  be  regarded  as  one  of 
the  happiest  inventions  in  formal  versification.  Its  adapta- 
tion, moreover,  to  the  style  and  subject  of  The  Faery  Queen 
is  perfect;  for  the  Spenserian  stanza  combines  the  advantage 
of  a  beautiful  integral  form,  of  sufficient  scope  to  admit  every 
variety  of  cadence,  with  the  unusual  additional  faculty  of 
linking  well  stanza  to  stanza.  It  is  therefore  an  admirable 
form  for  a  continuous  narrative,  made  up  of  successive  vi- 
gnettes; and  has  very  properly  been  likened  to  a  broad  and 
beautiful  river,  flowing  in  graceful  curves  with  a  "steady, 
soft,  irresistible  sweep  forwards.  "  The  extraordinary  smooth- 
ness of  Spenser's  versification  further  justifies  this  comparison 
together  with  the  agreeable  recurrence  of  the  rime,  so  cadenced 
as  not  too  strongly  to  mark  the  end  of  each  verse.  The  final 
alexandrine  is  inexpressibly  beautiful,  seeming  as  it  does  to 
round  up  each  stanza  with  a  graceful  retardo,  and,  by  its 
excess  over  the  other  lines,  to  break  the  monotony  of  the 
succession  of  decasyllables : 

Nought  under  heaven  so  strongly  doth  allure 
The  sense  of  man,  and  all  his  mind  possess, 
As  beauty's  lovely  bait,  that  doth  procure 
Great  warriors  oft  their  rigor  to  repress, 
And  mighty  hands  forget  their  manliness; 


THE   SPENSERIAN  STANZA  6i 

Drawn  with  the  power  of  an  heart-throbbing  eye, 
And  wrapped  in  fetters  of  a  golden  tress, 
That  can  with  melting  pleasance  mollify 
Their  hardened  hearts  enured  to  blood  and  cruelty. 

So  whilom  learned  that  mighty  Jewish  swain. 
Each  of  whose  locks  did  match  a  man  in  might, 
To  lay  his  spoils  before  his  leman's  train: 
So  also  did  that  great  CEtean  Knight 
For  his  love's  sake  his  lion's  skin  undight; 
And  so  did  warlike  Antony  neglect 
The  world's  whole  rule  for  Cleopatra's  sight. 
Such  wondrous  power  hath  women's  fair  aspect 
To  captive  men,  and  make  them  all  the  world  reject. 

The  Spenserian  stanza  is  really  less  monotonous  than  blank- 
verse,  even  with  Milton,  in  all  his  varied  powers,  as  its  ex- 
ponent, to  say  nothing  of  stanzas,  ending  in  a  couplet  and 
shorter  quatrains.  Many  poets  have  tried  to  improve  Spen- 
ser's stanza;  none  have  succeeded  either  in  writing  it  more 
gracefully  than  Spenser  or  in  inventing  a  better.  The  Spen- 
serian stanza  is  technically  an  extremely  difficult  one,  both 
from  its  length,  the  intricacy  of  the  rime,  and  the  necessity 
of  long  sustained  excellence.  Spenser  accomplished  all  these 
technical  demands  with  an  ease  that  must  remain  the  despair 
of  all  his  imitators. 

The  paradox  of  Spenser's  genius  lies  in  his  combination 
in  harmonious  union  of  a  passionate  love  of  the  sensuously 
beautiful  with  the  purest  and  sternest  ethical  spirit  of  his 
time.  This  it  is  that  makes  Spenser  alike  the  poet  of  the 
Renaissance  and  the  poet  of  the  Reformation.  The  com- 
bination of  these  apparently  repugnant  elements  is  exem- 
plified to  a  still  higher  degree  in  Milton,  the  poet  who  owes 
most  to  Spenser.  We  must  say  "apparently  repugnant 
elements,"  for  it  is  assuredly  no  essential  of  the  flower  of 
art  that  it  spring  from  the  offal  of  sensuality  and  irreligion, 
nor  of  purity  in  morals  and  religion  that  all  that  is  bright  and 
joyous  in  the  world  be  held  in  contempt.  It  is  this  union  of 
the  elements  of  beauty  with  moral  truth  that  gives  Spenser 
a  poetic  dignity  such  as  Tennyson  enjoyed  in  our  own  day. 


62  SPENSER,  "THE  NEW   POET" 

Spenser,  like  Tennyson,  is  one  of  the  greatest  pictorial  artists 
in  words,  and  a  consummate  craftsman  in  the  handling  of 
that  varied  succession  of  sounds  and  qualities  of  tone  in  which 
the  technique  of  verse  consists.     But  Spenser  is,  in  a  sense, 
the  last  of  the  medieval  poets.     With  all  the  decorative  glory 
of  the  Renaissance  his  own,  its  imagery,  its  power  to  compel 
words  to  the  expression  of  ideas,  the  figure  beneath  all  this 
elaboration  often  discloses  the  hard  angular  lines  of  didactic 
allegory.     It  is  not  Spenser's  truth  to  nature  nor  his  insight  into 
human  life  and  conduct,  his  sense  of  design,  nor  his  ability  to 
tell  a  connected  story  that  makes  him  great.     For,  if  the  truth 
be  confessed,  he  has  none  of  these  things  in  unusual  measure, 
and  we  scarcely  remember  a  character  or  an  episode  in  his 
great  epic,  or,  if  we  ^o,  it  leaves  the  impression  of  an  agreeable 
arabesque   in  which   the   design  was   pleasing  for  color  and 
graceful  of  curve,  but  not  memorable  or  distinctive,  nor  in- 
deed  at  all  times   comprehensible.     Spenser's   mind  was  in 
full   sympathy  with   the   strong,   refining,  and   ennobling  in- 
fluences of  the  age  which  produced  Sidney,  the  first  English 
gentleman.     Its  loyalty,  its  spirit  of  adventure,  its  sensitive- 
ness and  delicacy  of  sentiment,  all  found  an  echo  in  his  poetry, 
toned  with  a  deep  and  fervent  religious  sense  that  has  the 
effect  of  sanctifying  the  melodious  words  in  which  he  conveyed 
his  pure  and  beautiful  thoughts.     The  saving  grace  of  Spenser 
Ijis   first  his   devotion   to  the   beautiful,  which   no   Keats   nor 
Shelley  more  profoundly  worshipped;  and,  secondly  his  lofty 
1  moral  impulse,  involving  an  ideal  code  of  conduct  for  man 
and  a  devout  faith  in  good.     In  Spenser  the  worship  of  the 
beautiful  did  not  breed  the  passion  of  disappointment  which 
it  bred   in   Keats,  nor  the   defiant  revolutionary  attitude  to 
which   it   impelled    Shelley;   although   the    moral   impulse   of 
Spenser,  no  less  than  that  of  Shelley,  was  a  reforming  impulse. 
But  where  Shelley  was  revolutionary,  and  at  times  vituperative 
of  the  tyrants,  the  dungeons,  and  wrongs  of  suffering  humanity, 
Spenser  sought  ever  to  reform  by  an  appeal  to  the  uplifting 
effects  of  calm  and  exquisitely  wrought  poetry  and  by  dwelling 
with  the  passion  and  insistence  of  a  lover  on  the  beauty  of 
holiness. 


CHAPTER  V  \ 

\ 

LYLY  AND  THE   DRAMA  AT  COURT 

THE  accession  of  Queen  Elizabeth  found  England  with- 
out a  genuine  drama.  The  old  sacred  plays  that  had 
flourished  all  over  England,  in  the  ports  and  market  towns, 
even  in  boroughs  and  rural  villages,  were  extinct  or,  where 
lingering,  moribund.  The  new  drama  of  art  was  not,  as  yet. 
True,  the  reigns  of  Henry,  Edward,  and  Mary  abounded  in 
interludes,  moral,  educational,  religious,  and,  above  all,  con- 
troversial. Moreover  John  Heywood,  first  name  on  the  hon- 
orable role  of  English  dramatists,  had  amused  the  court  of 
Henry  VHI  with  witty  and  free-spoken  interludes;  and  in 
them  for  the  first  time  unmistakably,  the  artistic  process  was 
set  loose,  and  English  drama  absolved  from  its  ancient  intent 
to  guide,  edify,  and  instruct.  The  interludes  of  Heywood  are 
as  French  as  the  sonnet  of  Wyatt  is  Italian.  But  the  difference 
between  Rcspuhlica,  a  controversial  morality  written  to  incul- 
cate Roman  Catholic  principles,  or  King  Johan,  a  contro- 
versial morality  written  to  intrench  Protestant  prejudice,  and 
the  interludes  of  Heyw-ood,  is  the  difference  between  preaching 
and  literature,  a  difference  from  the  point  of  view  of  art  com- 
parable alone  to  that  between  midnight  and  daylight 

A  contrast  has  been  suggested  between  the  medieval  ballad 
and  the  courtly  lyric  of  art  which  found  its  way  into  England 
in  the  days  of  Henry  VHI;  and  the  origins  of  modern  English 
poetry  and  much  else  have  been  found  in  the  select  court 
circle,  the  coterie,  which  emulated  the  cultivation  of  the  better 
small  courts  of  Italy.  A  similar  antithesis  exists  between  the 
old  sacred  drama  and  the  new  regular  drama  of  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth.  The  old  drama  was,  as  all  know,  first  clerical  in  that 
the  priests  were  the  earliest  actors  and  promoters  of  it,  just  as 
the  drama  itself  was  in  its  essence  a  form  of  worship.  Soon 
all  this  was  changed  and  the  drama,  once  secularized,  fell  into 

63 


64  THE   DRAMA  AT  COURT 

the  hands  of  the  trade  guilds  and  became  bourgeois  and  the 
care  of  the  citizens  of  towns.  A  popular  nature  inhered  in  the 
old  sacred  drama  almost  to  the  end,  notwithstanding  that  both 
morality  and  interlude  were  often  employed  as  entertainments 
at  court,  in  the  schools,  and  in  the  universities  themselves. 
The  new  regular  drama,  then,  was  separated  from  the  past 
not  only  in  its  character  as  an  amusement  and  an  art;  but, 
in  its  quality  as  a  product  of  the  literature  of  the  court,  it  was 
equally  in  contrast  with  the  old  popular  drama  of  the  citizens. 
The  earliest  Elizabethan  dramatists  were  scholars,  gentlemen, 
and  courtiers;  then  came  the  school-masters  and  semi-profes- 
sional poets;  lastly,  the  actors  as  playwrights  and  the  pro- 
fessional dramatists.  Elizabethan  drama  originated  at  court, 
in  the  universities,  and  among  the  young  lawyers  of  the  Inns 
of  Court;  it  progressed  to  the  schools  and  singing  choirs  and 
thence  to  the  inn-yards  and  taverns  of  London. 

The  familiar  story  tells  how  Nicholas  Udall,  sometime 
head-master,  first  of  Eton  and  then  of  Westminster  School, 
wrote  the  earliest  English  Comedy,  Ralph  Roister  Doister,  in 
the  reign  of  King  Edward  or  earlier;  how  it  was  written  in 
imitation  of  the  Miles  Gloriosus  of  Plautus  and  acted  by  the 
boys  of  his  school  in  place  of  the  usual  Latin  play  at  Christmas; 
but  it  is  sometimes  forgotten  that  Udall  was  not  only  a  school- 
master but  a  professional  playwright  who  devised  pageants 
for  the  coronation  of  Queen  Anne  Boleyn  and  dramatic  per- 
formances for  Queen  Mary.  Of  William  Stevenson,  author 
of  another  of  the  earliest  regular  English  comedies.  Gammer 
Gurton's  Needle,  we  know  very  little.  This  was  a  university 
play  and  may  have  been  acted  as  early  as  1560.  Its  author- 
ship was  long  ascribed  to  Bishop  Still,  then  given  to  John 
Bridges,  and  now  settled  as  Stevenson's.  Gammer  Gurton  is 
modeled  on  the  interludes  of  Heywood,  and  tells  in  plain  and 
very  vernacular  \anguage  how  a  whole  village  is  set  by  the  ears 
by  the  loss  of  a  needle  and  the  chicanery  of  a  mischievous 
rascal  known  as  Diccon  of  Bedlam.  Ralph  Roister  Doister 
is  a  more  decorous  play  if  less  vigorous  and  is  concerned  with 
the  foolish  and  presumptuous  suit  of  Ralph,  a  vain  braggart, 
for  the  hand  of  the  merry  but  virtuous  Dame  Custance.     The 


PLAUTUS  AND   SENECA  65 

power  of  both  comedies  is  in  their  honest  representation  of 
actual  life. 

On  the  other  hand,  romance  came  into  regular  dramatic 
form  in  tragedy  and  at  the  hands  of  Thomas  Sackville  and 
Thomas  Norton,  two  young  students  of  the  Inner  Temple; 
and  the  name  of  their  play  was  Gorboduc  or  Ferrex  and  Porrex. 
Here  the  model  was  Seneca,  the  moralist  and  philosopher  of 
Neronian  Rome,  though  the  story  was  borrowed  from  that 
mythical  lore  which  Englishmen  of  the  day  included  in  the 
history  of  their  country.  Gorboduc  was  king  of  England. 
Like  Lear  he  unwisely  divided  his  kingdom  before  his  death 
between  his  two  sons,  Ferrex  and  Porrex,  a  procedure  which 
ended  in  the  destruction  of  all.  Now  this  tale  resembles  that 
of  the  sons  of  King  (Edipus  of  Thebes  who  likewise  divided  a 
kingdom  and  fought  to  the  death  over  it;  and  this  tragedy 
Seneca  treated  in  his  Phcenissce,  whence  in  all  probability  its 
attraction  for  the  young  English  students  of  law.  Gorboduc 
was  acted  before  Queen  Elizabeth  in  January,  1561,  and  is 
memorable  alike  as  the  first  regular  English  tragedy  and  as 
the  first  play  to  be  written  in  English  blank-verse. 

Plautus  and  Seneca  continued  favorite  models  with  Eng- 
lish dramatists  throughout  the  entire  reign  and  for  diverse 
reasons.  Plautus  is  genuinely  clever  and,  despite  all  his  bur- 
lesque and  farce,  a  dramatist  of  repute;  English  comedy  could 
have  found  no  better  model,  limited  though  his  subjects  are, 
and  tending,  though  his  characters  do,  to  types.  Seneca,  on 
the  contrary,  was  only  the  most  available  model  for  tragedy. 
His  plays  were  not  even  intended  for  acting;  and  their  florid 
rhetoric,  moralized  commonplaces,  and  exaggerated  horrors 
were  but  a  crude  example  to  young  English  tragedy.  More- 
over it  was  a  mistaken  idea  of  the  usages  of  the  ancients  as 
exemplified  in  Seneca  that  long  kept  Italian  tragedy,  and  after 
it  that  of  France,  in  classical  leading-strings  to  the  detriment 
of  the  highest  art.  It  is  impossible  here  to  mention  the  many 
plays  that  followed  on  these  various  models;  suffice  it  to  say 
that  from  the  sixties  onward  the  drama  flourished  steadily, 
furnishing  many  notable  examples.  Thus,  Gascoigne  followed 
Gorboduc,  a  few  years  after,  with  a  Senecan  tragedy  Jocasta, 


66  THE  DRAMA  AT  COURT 

and  adapted  from  the  Italian  of  Dolci  a  comedy  called 
Supposes  whence  Shakespeare  had  a  part  of  his  Taming  of  the 
Shrew.  In  the  seventies  Robert  Wilmot  rewrote  a  play  (origi- 
nally by  himself  and  others)  called  Tancred  and  Gismunda, 
a  romantic  tragedy  levying  on  Italian  rather  than  classical 
sources.  Whetstone,  much  about  the  same  time,  wrote  his 
Promos  and  Cassandra  whence  Shakespeare  derived  his  grave 
comedy.  Measure  for  Measure.  A  play  on  the  story  of  Romeo 
and  Juliet  is  alluded  to  as  "lately  set  forth  on  stage,"  two 
years  before  Shakespeare  was  born.  And  an  interlude  of 
The  Cruel  Debtor,  registered  four  years  later,  may  not  impos- 
sibly be  an  earlier  version  of  a  play  called  The  Jew,  wherein 
Gosson  tells  us  was  depicted  "the  greediness  of  worldly 
choosers  (Portia's  unsuccessful  suitors)  and  bloody  minds  of 
usurers  (Shylock's  implacable  pursuit  of  Antonio)."  In 
nothing  are  we  more  apt  to  mistake  than  in  the  supposition 
that  Shakespeare  was  identified  with  the  beginnings  of  English 
drama.  The  drama  in  a  general  sense  was  at  least  three  hun- 
dred and  fifty  years  old  when  Shakespeare  began  to  write,  and 
plays  of  the  type  of  his  own  had  long  been  popular  before  he 
was  out  of  his  boyhood. 

The  history  of  the  drama  up  to  the  coming  of  the  Armada 
is  bound  up  with  the  tastes  and  the  fashions  of  the  court.  In 
view  of  the  centralized  power  of  the  Tudors  and  the  formation 
about  the  person  of  the  sovereign  of  a  brilliant  and  cultivated 
court,  the  personal  character  of  the  monarch  came  more  and 
more  to  affect  society  and  the  literature  and  art  which  mir- 
rored it.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  the  fickleness  and  men- 
dacity, the  doubles  and  turns,  of  her  Macchiavellian  politics. 
Queen  Elizabeth  must  have  been  a  remarkable  woman  as  well 
as  a  magnificent  and  august  sovereign  to  have  inspired  in  men 
of  gravity  and  wisdom,  as  well  as  in  those  of  more  elastic  tem- 
per, those  emotions  of  mingled  loyalty  and  gallantry  which 
glow  in  nearly  all  who  knew  her  personally,  and  which  may 
be  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  admirable  testimonies  to  her 
fortunate  reign.  Elizabeth  had  acquired  many  courtly  Italian 
accomplishments  to  gloss,  if  not  to  refine,  a  genuine  English 
spirit  which  was  by  no  means  lacking  in  coarseness.     Dis- 


ELIZABETHAN  PLAYERS  67 

liking  religious  feeling  and  mistrusting  sectarian  zeal,  Eliza- 
beth had  inherited  a  love  of  form  and  pageantry,  which  latter 
had  flourished  with  masking  at  her  father's  court.  These 
traits  resulted  in  the  royal  encouragement  of  ceremonials, 
functions,  and  amusements,  the  drama  among  the  rest.  As 
a  consequence  the  office  of  the  revels,  to  which  fell  the  super- 
vision of  plays  and  the  allowance  of  their  performance,  was 
increased  in  importance,  entertainments  were  constantly  de- 
vised for  the  court  and  for  the  royal  progresses,  and  the  taste 
for  such  things,  growing  on  what  it  fed,  soon  demanded  the 
services  of  professional  actors  and  pla}^vrights. 

The  actors  of  the  time  of  Elizabeth  were  of  several  classes. 
There  were  first  the  gentlemen  of  the  Inns  of  Court,  of  the 
universities,  occasionally  the  courtiers  themselves;  these  were 
all  non-professionals.  There  were,  secondly,  the  boys  of  the 
public  schools  and  the  singing  schools  attached  to  the  royal 
chapels  and  to  the  cathedral  of  St.  Paul's.  These  soon  be- 
came practically  professionals.  Lastly,  there  were  the  adult 
professional  actors,  a  class  at  first  held  in  great  contempt  and 
often  verily  little  better  than  vagabonds,  but  destined,  as  time 
went  on,  to  claim  among  its  numbers  such  actors  as  Burbage, 
Alleyn,  and  Shakespeare,  men  who  retired  honored  and  rich 
from  the  profession  which  their  talents  had  graced. 

The  plays  of  Sackville  and  Gascolgne  are  occasional  plays. 
They  were  acted  by  amateur  actors  and  staged  by  the  authors 
themselves.  But  amateur  performances  could  not  long  con- 
tent the  cultivated  and  critical  audiences  that  gathered  about 
the  queen;  and  the  professional  actor  soon  emerged  in  answer 
to  the  demand  for  better  music  and  finer  histrionic  art.  Dur- 
ing the  first  two  decades  of  the  reign  nearly  a  dozen  names  of 
school-masters  and  choir-masters  who  were  likewise  the  man- 
agers of  theatrical  companies,  appear.  Among  them  was 
Richard  Edwards,  Master  of  the  Chapel  between  156 1  and 
1567  and  the  author  of  an  extant  play  called  Damon  and 
Pythias,  and  a  lost  Palcemon  and  Arcyte,  on  the  theme  of 
Chaucer's  Knight's  Tale  and  Fletcher's  Two  Noble  Kinsmen. 
To  Richard  Bower,  predecessor  of  Edwards,  has  been  assigned 
Appius  and  Virginia,  an  indifferent  production  still  extant. 


68  THE  DRAMA  AT  COURT 

Edwards'  successor  also,  William  Hunnis,  was  pamphleteer, 
musician,  poet,  playwright,  and  manager  as  well.  To  Hunnis 
have  been  credited  no  less  than  thirteen  plays,  performed  at 
court  between  1567  and  1582;  but  no  one  of  them  remains 
extant.  The  early  traffic  with  the  stage  of  Sebastian  Wescott 
of  Paul's,  of  Richard  Ferrant  of  Windsor,  of  John  Taylor  and 
William  Elderton  of  Westminster,  and  Richard  Mulcaster  of 
the  Merchant  Tailors'  School  remains  even  more  doubtful 
and  shadowy.  But  the  nature  of  the  plays  that  they  staged 
is  sufficiently  know^n.  Such  were  the  anonymous  Queen 
Hester  and  Horestes.  In  the  former  the  subject  and  treat- 
ment of  the  old  sacred  drama  persist.  The  latter  is  a  naive 
and  preposterous  popularization  of  the  old  Greek  story  of 
Orestes.  Cambyses  by  Thomas  Preston,  fellow  of  King's 
College,  Cambridge,  in  1564,  where  and  when  his  play  was 
acted  before  the  queen,  long  remained  the  butt  of  contemporary 
ridicule  for  its  bombast  and  extravagant  rant,  attracting  again 
and  again  the  pungent  satire  of  Shakespeare. 

The  new  professional  actors,  trained  by  masters  such  as 
Edwards  and  Hunnis,  were  the  pupils  of  the  great  schools, 
Eton  and  Westminster,  or  the  boys  who  sang  in  the  choirs  of 
the  royal  chapel  or  of  the  cathedral  of  St.  Paul's.  This 
custom  of  training  choir-boys  to  entertain  the  court  and  the 
nobility  extends  back  into  very  early  times.  It  soon  became 
mixed  with  a  custom  of  different  origin,  the  performance  in  the 
schools  on  festival  occasions  of  classical  plays  for  the  practice  in 
Latin  involved.  For  the  better  service,  moreover,  of  the  royal 
chapels,  it  had  long  been  customary  to  issue  letters  patent, 
permitting  choir-masters  to  take  good  voices  for  training  to 
the  royal  service,  a  power  which  was  soon  abused.  For  the 
choir-master  was  thus  converted  into  a  theatrical  manager 
and  added  an  eager  pursuit  of  popular  favor  to  his  former  duty 
as  purveyor  of  entertainment  to  the  court.  In  1597  one 
Nathaniel  Giles,  then  master  of  the  chapel,  under  a  commission 
of  this  kind,  actually  kidnapped  boys  on  their  way  to  school 
and  delivered  them  over  to  Henry  Evans,  who  had  just  taken 
a  lease  from  James  Burbage  of  the  newly  renovated  Black- 
friars'  Theater.     According  to  the  complaint  of  Henry  Clifton, 


JOHN   LYLY  69 

the  father  of  one  of  these  boys,  to  the  Star  Chamber,  the  chil- 
dren were  restrained  in  their  Hberty  and  compelled  to  learn 
their  parts  at  the  point  of  the  rod.  Clifton's  son  was  released; 
but  seven  other  boys,  whose  names  appear  in  this  complaint, 
remained  in  this  servitude,  indubitably  with  the  connivance 
if  not  the  approbation  of  the  queen's  council.  Indeed  it  has 
recently  been  affirmed  that  the  status  of  this  troupe  of  the 
Children  of  the  Chapel  Royal  acting  at  Blackfriars  was  that 
of  a  company  under  the  direct  patronage  of  the  queen,  estab- 
lished not  only  with  her  knowledge  but  carrying  out  her  will.^ 
Certain  it  is  that  this  company  became  a  very  important  one, 
playing  many  of  the  most  difficult  and  successful  plays  of  the 
age;  and  that  it  continued  at  the  Blackfriars  under  the  later 
name  of  the  Children  of  the  Queen's  Revels  until  the  lease  of 
that  theater  was  resumed  by  Shakespeare  and  Burbage's  com- 
pany in  1609.  The  boy  companies  continued  throughout 
the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth  powerful  rivals  even  of  the  best 
professional  actors,  though  they  were  not  infrequently  "in- 
hibited," as  the  term  went,  for  indulging  in  satire  and  other 
abuses,  and  were  at  last  practically  suppressed. 

The  most  interesting  person  whose  career  as  a  playwright 
falls  among  the  school-master  and  choir-master  managers  is 
John  Lyly.  Born  within  a  year  of  Spenser,  Lyly  was  thus 
ten  years  Shakespeare's  senior.  From  College,  he  removed  to 
court  to  enjoy  the  patronage  of  Burleigh  and  the  Earl  of  Ox- 
ford, for  whom  he  appears  at  one  time  to  have  managed  a  com- 
pany of  players.  The  publication  of  his  novel,  Euphues,  in 
1579,  as  we  have  seen,  brought  Lyly  an  immediate  and,  for 
his  time,  an  extraordinary  reputation;  and  a  second  part,  in 
the  following  year,  confirmed  it.  Lyly  was  possessed  of  an 
ambition  to  hold  a  post  in  the  office  of  the  revels,  for  which 
he  was  better  fitted  than  any  man  in  England.  But  notwith- 
standing recent  affirmations  to  the  effect  that  Lyly  became  in 
1585  the  Clerk  Controller  of  the  Revels,  besides  holding  the 
post  of  the  Vice  Master  of  the  Children  of  St.  Paul's,  neither  of 
these  statements  can  be  substantiated.     Lyly  was  at  one  time 

^  See  C.  W.  Wallace,  in  Nebraska  University  Studies,  1908,  viii, 
240  ii. 


•JO  THE  DRAMA  AT  COURT 

a  member  of  Parliament  and  a  writer  in  the  contemporary 
prose  of  controversy,  but  his  tastes  naturally  turned  him  to 
the  drama  and  to  the  devising  of  entertainments  for  the  court. 

Eight  comedies  remain  to  attest  the  dramatic  activity  of 
Lyly  which  was  confined  for  the  most  part  within  the  decade 
of  the  eighties.  All  of  them,  except  one,  deal  in  a  manner  both 
fanciful  and  romantic  with  material  ultimately  of  classical 
derivation;  and  three  are  commonly  supposed  to  conceal  an 
allegorical  significance  underneath  a  seemingly  mythological 
story.  Thus  Endimion  and  Sappho  and  Phao  are  alleged  to 
figure  forth  intrigues  within  the  intimate  circle  that  surrounded 
her  majesty,  the  latter  alluding  especially  to  the  visit  of  the  Due 
d'Alen^on  and  his  offer  for  Elizabeth's  hand;  whilst  Midas, 
the  foolish  Phrygian  king  in  whose  grasping  hand  all  things 
were  turned  to  gold,  alludes  to  England's  arch  enemy,  King 
Philip  of  Spain.  The  remaining  plays  seem  devoid  of  alle- 
gorical design.  Among  them,  Campaspe  tells  the  story  of 
Alexander's  infatuation  for  the  fair  Theban  captive  of  that 
name  and  his  magnanimous  release  of  her  affections  to  the 
painter  Apelles.  Interspersed  as  it  is  with  the  humors  of 
Diogenes  in  his  intercourse  with  Alexander  and  the  philos- 
ophers, the  whole  is  a  pleasing  comedy  and  it  deserves  the 
praise  which  it  has  received  as  a  love  tale  well  told.  Mother 
Bomhie  reverts  to  a  closer  following  of  the  method  of  Roman 
comedy,  dealing  in  a  well-constructed  and  clever  plot  with 
the  familiar  situation  of  children  exchanged  in  infancy,  and 
parents  the  dupes  of  clever  and  intriguing  servants.  Gala- 
thea,  Lovers  Metamorphosis,  and  The  Woman  in  the  Moon 
are  best  described  under  the  general  designation  of  pastoral 
comedies  of  a  mythological  type.  The  last  alone  is  written 
in  verse.  All  contain  some  allegory,  but  it  is  in  none  of  these 
cases  as  complete  as  that  of  Endimion  or  Midas,  and  may  be 
suspected  as  intended  to  convey  little  more  than  the  customary 
"concealed"  compliment  to  the  queen.  Except  for  Love's 
Metamorphosis,  all  the  comedies  of  Lyly  are  relieved  by  farcical 
scenes  usually  sustained  by  pages  and  servants.  But  few  of 
his  comedies  are  wanting  in  topics  of  serious  gravity. 

Endimion  remains  by  far  the  most  interesting  of  the  dramas 


LYLY'S  "ENDIMION"  71 

of  Lyly,  alike  for  Its  intrinsic  qualities  and  for  the  circum- 
stance that  it  is  most  typical  of  the  style  and  method  of  its 
author.  The  allegory,  too,  of  Endimion  is  elaborately  con- 
ceived and  carried  out  with  ingenuity  and  address.  This  has 
given  rise  to  many  theories  and  surmises  among  scholars  in 
which  the  date  of  the  presentation  of  the  play  is  involved  and 
its  relations  to  certain  intrigues  of  the  intimate  court  circle  of 
Elizabeth  is  affirmed  and  denied.  This  drama,  which  is 
otherwise  called  The  Man  in  the  Moon,  is  based  on  the  well- 
known  classical  myth  of  the  sleep  of  Endimion  on  the  slopes 
of  Mount  Latmus  and  of  the  goddess  Diana,  enamored  of  him 
and  impulsively  awakening  him  by  her  kiss.  Obviously  if 
this  myth  was  to  be  applied  in  any  wise  to  the  queen  —  and  it 
appears  to  have  been  impossible  for  any  Elizabethan  poet  to 
name  Diana,  Cynthia,  Semele,  or  any  other  mythical  virgin 
without  such  an  allusion  —  some  change  must  be  made  in  the 
stor}'.  Lyly  therefore  represented  the  kiss  as  a  boon  extorted 
only  after  entreaty  and  as  a  sovereign  condescension  free  from 
the  slightest  taint  of  an  earthly  affection.  It  is  Endimion  who 
is  enamored,  not  Cynthia,  the  queen;  and  his  affection  is  of 
the  nature  of  that  reverent  adoration  of  beauty  in  womanhood 
which  has  long  been  recognized  as  one  of  the  distinctive  "notes" 
of  Renaissance  poetry.  It  has  been  customary  to  interpret 
the  allegory  of  this  play,  like  that  of  The  Faery  Queen,  as  of  a 
double  intent,  the  one  abstract  and  relating  to  the  contrasts 
of  the  love  inspired  by  heavenly  and  earthly  beauty,  love,  free 
or  tainted  wnth  amorous  desire,  the  other  concrete,  referring 
to  actual  persons,  their  relations  and  intrigues.  Not  only  is 
Cynthia  the  queen,  but  Endimion  is  the  Earl  of  Leicester. 
TelluSjthe  earth  and  foil  to  the  goddess,  the  moon,  is  either  the 
Countess  of  Sheffield  or  Mar}'^  Queen  of  Scots;  and  the  minor 
personages  fall  more  or  less  into  their  places  according  as  we 
interpret  the  events  of  the  whole  play  as  referring  to  Elizabeth's 
discovery,  in  1579,  of  Leicester's  marriage  with  the  Countess 
of  Essex  through  the  French  ambassador,  M.  de  Simler,  or 
prefer  the  more  recent  interpretation  that  places  the  play  at 
1585  and  refers  the  allegory  to  the  historical  duel  of  Elizabeth 
with  Mary  of  Scotland.     It  is  but  fair  to  say  that  recently  a 


72  THE  DRAMA  AT  COURT 

protest  has  been  raised  against  these  concrete  historical  in- 
terpretations of  Endimion;  Lyly's  comedy  has  been  studied 
anew  and  the  whole  allegory  referred  to  the  abstractions  of 
the  contrasts  and  relations  of  heavenly  and  earthly  beauty  as 
set  forth  in  the  conventionalized  fashion  of  contemporary  love- 
making.^  To  this  we  may  give  a  qualified  assent,  remember- 
ing, however,  that  inconsistency  in  its  conduct  and  denial  by 
the  author  can  be  urged  as  no  real  objections  to  allegory  in  any 
age,  and  that  it  was  peculiarly  the  nature  of  English  allegory 
in  Lyly's  time  to  conceal  a  concrete  as  well  as  an  abstract 
significance. 

While  no  author  can  be  judged  as  a  dramatist  by  short 
extracts,  the  following  may  suffice  to  show  the  quality  of  Lyly's 
refined  and  Euphuistic  diction  as  well  as  the  nature  of  his 
allegorical  flattery  of  the  queen  in  this  play. 

Endimion.  O  fair  Cynthia,  why  do  others  term  thee  unconstant, 
whom  I  have  ever  found  unmovable  ?  Injurious  time,  corrupt 
manners,  unkind  men,  who  finding  a  constancy  not  to  be  matched  in 
my  sweet  mistress,  have  christened  her  with  the  name  of  wavering, 
waxing  and  waning.  Is  she  inconstant  that  keepeth  a  settled  course, 
which  since  her  first  creation  altereth  not  one  minute  in  her  moving  ? 
There  is  nothing  thought  more  admirable  or  commendable  in  the  sea 
than  the  ebbing  and  flowing;  and  shall  the  moon,  from  whom  the  sea 
taketh  this  virtue,  be  accounted  fickle  for  increasing  and  decreasing  ? 
Flowers  in  their  buds  are  nothing  worth  till  they  be  blown;  nor 
blossoms  accounted  till  they  be  ripe  fruit;  and  shall  we  then  say  they 
be  changeable  for  that  they  grow  from  seeds  to  leaves,  from  leaves  to 
buds,  from  buds  to  their  perfection  ?  .  .  .  Tell  me,  Eumenides, 
what  is  he  that  having  a  mistress  of  ripe  years  and  infinite  virtues, 
great  honors  and  unspeakable  beauty,  but  would  wish  that  she  might 
grow  tender  again  ?  getting  youth  by  years  and  never  decaying  beauty 
by  time;  whose  fair  face  neither  the  summer's  blaze  can  scorch  nor 
winter's  blast  chap,  nor  the  numbering  of  years  breed  altering  of 
colors.  Such  is  my  sweet  Cynthia,  whom  time  can  not  touch  because 
she  is  divine,  nor  will  offend  because  she  is  delicate.  O  Cynthia,  if 
thou  shouldst  always  continue  at  thv  fulness,  both  gods  and  men  would 
conspire  to  ravish  thee.     But  thou  to  abate  the  pride  of  our  affections 

^  See  P.  W.  Long  in  Publications  of  the  Modern  Language  Asso- 
ciation, xxiv,  1909. 


GEORGE   PEELE  73 

dost  detract  from  thy  perfections;  thinking  it  sufficient  if  once  in  a 
month  we  enjoy  a  glimpse  of  thy  majesty;  and  then  to  increase  our 
griefs  thou  dost  decrease  thy  gleams,  coming  out  of  thy  royal  robes, 
wherewith  thou  dazzlest  our  eyes,  down  into  thy  swathe  clouts,  be- 
guiling our  eyes;  and  then  — 

Eumenides.  Stay  there,  Endimion,  thou  that  commitest  idolatry 
wilt  straight  blaspheme,  if  thou  be  suffered.  Sleep  would  do  thee 
more  good  than  speech:  the  moon  heareth  thee  not,  or  if  she  do, 
regardeth  thee  not. 

When  all  has  been  said,  Lyly's  Endimion  remains  a  bril- 
liant piece  of  court  comedy,  skilfully  constructed  and  ad- 
mirably sustained.  The  transition  from  Horestes  and  Cam- 
hyses  to  Endimion  is  the  transition  from  the  botching  of  the 
tyro  to  the  professional  touch  of  the  artist.  True  it  is  that 
these  court  plays  of  Lyly  are  rhetorical  and  decorative,  super- 
ficial and  limited  in  any  appeal  to  the  modern  reader  by 
reason  of  their  occasional  nature;  none  the  less  his  contribu- 
tions to  the  drama  are  tangible  and  definite.  It  was  Lyly 
who  gave  to  English  comedy  ease  of  dialogue  and  natural 
witty  retort;  who  gave  to  drama  likewise  fluency  and  finish  of 
style.  He  drew  for  the  first  time  portraits  of  the  cultivated 
men  and  women  of  his  day  in  the  easy  intercourse  of  good 
society,  and  he  restrained  exorbitant  medieval  allegory  to  a 
modest  and  subsidiary  place.  He  w^as  inventive,  too,  and 
happy  in  uniting  the  diverse  classical  and  other  elements  out 
of  which  he  fashioned  his  plays.  Indeed  it  may  be  affirmed 
that  he  is  the  superior  of  many  of  his  successors  in  these  as  in 
some  other  qualities  of  his  art.  It  was  an  innovation  in 
Lyly  to  write  his  plays  —  all  except  one  —  in  prose,  and  it 
is  not  to  be  denied  that  his  prose,  Euphuistic  though  it  is  in 
some  of  his  earlier  productions,  is  w^anting  neither  in  idiomatic 
force  and  eff^ectiveness  nor  in  grace  and  elegance.  In  a 
word,  it  was  Lyly  who  raised  the  entertainments  of  the  court 
from  the  haphazard  of  amateurishness  to  a  professional 
standard,  giving  to  the  drama  for  the  first  time  artistic  form 
and  unity. 

Lyly's  earliest  rival  at  court  was  George  Peele,  whose 
first  drama.  The  Arraignment  of  Paris,  was  acted  before  the 


74  THE   DRAMA  AT  COURT 

queen  between  1581  and  1584,  Peele,  son  of  the  clerk  of 
Christ's  Hospital,  was  educated  there  and  at  Oxford,  where 
his  interest  in  the  drama  seems  to  have  been  inspired  by  a 
kinsman,  William  Wager,  the  author  of  several  Latin  plays. 
In  these  plays  Peele  appeared  as  an  actor  and  he  is  related  to 
have  translated  while  at  college  one  of  the  Iphigenias  of 
Euripides,  but  whether  into  English  or  into  Latin  remams 
uncertain.  From  college  Peele  went  to  court,  where  the  slender 
patronage  he  mustered  could  not  have  carried  him  far.  Before 
long  he  gravitated  to  the  popular  stage  then  occupied  by 
Wilson  and  Tarlton.  Peele  led  a  riotous  and  Bohemian 
life  and  became  a  peg,  so  to  speak,  on  which  to  hang  knavish 
stories  and  worse.  Possessed  as  he  was  at  times  of  no  mean 
lyrical  gift,  Peele  is  imitative  and  eclectic  in  the  drama  and 
constantly  follows  in  the  wake  of  others.  Thus  his  Arraign- 
ment of  Paris  is  a  clear  effort  to  outdo  Lyly  in  his  own  court 
drama  and  a  bid  for  the  patronage  of  the  court;  his  Battle 
of  Alcazar  frankly  imitates  Marlowe's  Tamhurlaine;  his 
Ediuard  I  is  an  inferior  chronicle  play,  disfigured  by  an  at- 
tempt to  gain  momentary  popularity  by  a  gross  misrepresenta- 
tion of  one  of  the  Spanish-born  queens  of  England;  and  his 
David  and  Bethsahe  is  an  ill-advised  if  poetical  revival  of  the 
Bible  play  in  the  guise  of  a  chronical  history.  Peele  seems  to 
have  been  possessed  of  an  uncontrollable  bias  towards  bur- 
lesque; for  on  this  ground  alone  can  we  explain  his  Old  Wives 
Tale  in  which  the  absurdities  and  extravagances  of  old  romance 
are  ridiculed  with  delightful  effect.  Locrine,  which  belongs 
to  the  same  source  m  mythical  British  history  as  King  Lear, 
is  an  extravagant  attempt  to  popularize  Senecan  blood  and 
horror  on  the  public  stage.  Although  never  avowed  by  Peele 
as  his,  it  seems  almost  unquestionably  of  his  authorship, 
and  is  perhaps  truly  read  as  a  take-off  on  other  like  produc- 
tions of  his  time.  Peele's  work  must  all  have  been  written 
while  Lyly  was  still  active,  for  he  died  prematurely,  in  1597, 
worn  out  by  disease  and  a  dissolute  life. 

Peele's  Arraignment  of  Paris  is  a  dramatic  version  of  the 
old  myth  of  (Enone's  unhappy  love  for  Paris  combined  with 
his  award  of  the  golden  apple  of  Ate  to  Venus  on  her  promise 


THE  "ARRAIGNMENT  OF  PARIS"  75 

to  bestow  on  him  the  most  beautiful  woman  in  the  world. 
But  Peele  at  this  point  adapted  mythology  to  the  exigencies 
of  a  graceful  flattery  of  royalty,  borrowing  his  idea  from  an 
old  poem  addressed  to  the  queen  by  Gascoigne  some  half- 
dozen  years  before.  Paris,  on  complaint  of  Juno  and  Pallas 
to  Jove,  is  summoned  to  attend  an  action  "entered  in  the 
court  of  heaven."  The  parties  meet  at  "Diana's  bower," 
and  so  equal  are  the  claims  of  all  three  that  Jove  is  perplexed 
until  Apollo  suggests : 

Refer  this  sentence  where  it  doth  belong: 
In  this,  say  I,  fair  Phoebe  hath  the  wrong; 
Not  that  I  mean  her  beauty  bears  the  prize, 
But  that  the  holy  law  of  heaven  denies 
One  god  to  meddle  in  another's  power; 
And  this  befell  so  near  Diana's  bower. 
As  for  th'  appeasing  this  unpleasant  grudge, 
In  my  conceit  she  hight  the  fittest  judge. 

Diana  accepts  the  duty  of  deciding,  and,  having  sworn  each 
god  and  goddess  to  obedience,  declares : 

There  wons  within  these  pleasant  shady  woods 
Where  neither  storm  nor  sun's  distemperature 
Have  power  to  hurt  by  cruel  heat  or  cold, 

a  gracious  nymph, 

That  honors  Dian  for  her  chastity. 

And  likes  the  labors  well  of  Phoebe's  groves; 

The  place  Elizium  hight,  and  of  the  place 

Her  name  that  governs  there  Eliza  is; 

A  kingdom  that  may  well  compare  with  mine, 

An  ancient  seat  of  kings,  a  second  Troy, 

Y-compassed  round  with  a  commodious  sea: 


She  giveth  laws  of  justice  and  of  peace; 

And  on  her  head,  as  fits  her  fortune  best. 

She  wears  a  wreath  of  laurel,  gold  and  palm; 

Her  robes  of  purple  and  of  scarlet  dye; 

Her  veil  of  white,  as  best  befits  a  maid: 

Her  ancestors  live  in  the  house  of  fame: 

She  giveth  arms  of  happy  victory. 

And  flowers  to  deck  her  lions  crowned  with  gold, 


76  THE  DRAMA  AT  COURT 

This  peerless  nymph,  whom  heaven  and  earth  beloves, 

This  paragon,  this  only,  this  is  she, 

In  whom  do  meet  so  many  gifts  in  one, 

On  whom  our  country  gods  so  often  gaze, 

In  honor  of  whose  name  the  Muses  sing; 

In  state  Queen  Juno's  peer,  for  power  in  arms 

And  virtues  of  the  mind  Minerva's  mate, 

As  fair  and  lovely  as  the  Queen  of  Love, 

As  chaste  as  Dian  in  her  chaste  desires: 

The  same  is  she,  if  Phoebe  do  no  wrong. 

To  whom  this  ball  of  merit  doth  belong. 

And  after  further  fitting  ceremony,  the  distance  from  the 
stage  to  the  throne  is  traversed  and  the  prize  is  conveyed  into 
the  royal  hand  of  the  true  Eliza.  There  are  more  beautiful 
and  poetical  lines  than  these  just  quoted  from  The  Arraign- 
ment, for  the  comedy  abounds  in  exquisite  lyrics,  and  in 
charming  poetry  and  imagery,  but  none  could  better  disclose 
tne  quality  of  these  plays  of  courtly  compliment.  It  may  be 
surmised  that  so  admirable  a  piece  of  poetical  flattery  w^ould 
have  meant  preferment  and  fortune  to  a  pretty  fellow  like 
Sidney,  Greville,  or  Harington,  had  any  one  of  them  devised 
it;  Peele  w^as  too  lowly  to  have  received  more  than  a  brace 
or  two  of  angels  for  his  play,  and  these  we  may  believe  he 
speedily  spent  in  the  honor  of  her  majesty's  health  and  to  the 
detriment  of  his  own.  In  the  maintenance  of  the  perspective 
of  literary  history  we  must  recognize  in  Peek's  Arraignment 
of  Paris,  printed  in  1584,  a  metrical  facility,  an  ease  and  grace 
of  expression  in  verse,  remarkable  when  we  recall  that  at  that 
date  Marlowe  was  still  at  Cambridge  and  Shakespeare  in- 
distinguishable as  yet  among  his  fellow  yeomen  of  Warwick- 
shire. 

And  now  let  us  turn  to  the  presentation  of  these  earlier 
plays  at  court  and  to  some  of  the  means  by  which  they  were 
commended  in  action  to  their  auditors.  Shows,  maskings, 
and  allegorical  devices  had  been  so  long  familiar  to  the  Eng- 
lish court  that  when  the  regular  drama  emerged  from  the 
chaos  of  medieval  dramatic  conditions,  all  of  those  things 
were  at  once  adopted.      An  early  use,  for  example,  of  dumb 


STAGING  OF  COURT  PLAYS  ']i 

shows  or  tableaux  as  we  should  call  them,  is  to  be  found  in 
such  plays  as  Gorboduc  and  Tancred  and  Gismunda.  In 
the  first  the  shows  were  extraneous  to  the  action  of  the  drama 
though  illustrative  of  it,  as  for  example  the  parade  of  a  com- 
pany of  "harquibusiers"  in  order  of  battle  to  betoken  "tu- 
mults, rebellious  arms,  a  civil  war."  In  Tancred  the  tableaux 
were  for  the  most  part  made  up  of  groupings  of  the  personages 
of  the  tragedy.  In  both,  the  dumb  show  eked  out  defective 
action  and  appears  to  have  been  derived  from  an  Italian  de- 
vice. Costume  at  court  was  always  elaborate  and  costly,  as 
the  extant  inventories  of  the  accounts  of  the  office  of  the  revels 
still  attest  with  their  entries  of  silk,  velvet  and  damask,  em- 
broidery and  cloth  of  gold  and  silver.  The  fitness  of  this 
apparel  for  the  scene  and  purpose  in  hand  is  often  far  to  seek: 
a  friar  is  clad  in  russet  velvet  with  sleeves  of  yellow,  Turks 
wear  caps  unlike  either  fez  or  turban,  and  the  Greek  worthies 
seem  in  one  case  to  have  been  actually  labeled  with  the 
name  of  each  on  breast  and  back. 

The  drama  of  the  court  was  staged  from  the  earliest  times 
with  properties  and  even  with  scenes,  in  our  modern  sense, 
of  considerable  elaboration.  These  scenes  were  called  "play- 
ers' houses"  in  the  accounts  of  the  revels,  and  were  constructed 
of  canvas  stretched  on  frames  and  painted.  Arbors,  foun- 
tains, trees,  mountains,  castles,  battlements,  and  palaces  are 
among  the  scenes  thus  enumerated,  and  they  were  "steered" 
by  means  of  "long  boards"  or  raised  and  lowered  by  pulleys. 
Some  must  have  been  of  considerable  size,  for  cities,  hills, 
and  forests  were  sometimes  represented  and  the  transportation 
of  them  by  water  was  deemed  of  sufficient  importance  to 
receive  a  separate  entry  in  the  accounts.^  These  evidences 
derived  from  the  office  of  the  revels  are  corroborated  when 
we  come  to  look  at  the  plays  still  extant.  Trees  appear  on 
the  stage  in  Lyly's  Gallathea  and  Love's  Metamorphosis,  a 
palace  in  Midas,  a  fountain  and  castle  in  Endimion.  The 
Misfortunes  of  Arthur,  by  Thomas  Hughes  and  others,  acted 
in   1587,   represented  "the   house  appointed  for  Arthur"  as 

'  See  A.  Feuiilerat,  Documents  relating  to  the  Office  of  the  Revels, 
1908,  pp.  20,  116,  129,  331,349- 


78  THE   DRAMA  AT  COURT 

well  as  Mordred's  house.  Mother  Botnhic  calls  for  a  row  of 
some  halt-dozen  houses,  among  them  a  tavern;  and  the  action 
traversed  the  stage  from  house  to  house  after  the  manner  of 
medieval  pageantry.  Gascoigne's  Supposes,  like  several 
early  plays,  calls  for  a  balcony.  Curtains  were  in  constant 
use;  they  were  commonly  drawn  apart  on  rings  run  on  wires, 
but  in  one  case  at  least  they  appear  to  have  been  raised  up 
and  down. 

In  general  when  a  play  was  given  at  court  or  in  one  of  the 
halls  of  the  university  the  whole  room  was  fitted  and  decorated 
for  the  purpose.  An  interesting  account  of  the  arrangement 
of  the  Common  Hall  of  Christ's  Church  College,  Oxford, 
for  the  queen's  visit  of  1566  has  come  down  to  us,  the  work 
of  one  John  Bereblock.  The  hall  was  paneled  with  gilt, 
arched  and  frescoed  to  represent  an  ancient  Roman  palace. 
A  large  stage,  "many  steps  high,"  was  erected  across  the 
upper  end  on  which  were  reared  "palaces  and  well-equipped 
houses"  for  the  actors  and  masquers.  Scaffolds  were  raised 
about  the  room  with  a  lofty  seat  and  golden  canopy  for  the 
queen;  and  especial  attention  was  given  to  the  brilliant  light- 
ing of  the  entire  room  by  "cressets,  lamps,  and  burning  can- 
dles." It  has  recently  been  maintained  that  the  private 
theaters,  such  as  Blackfriars,  that  of  the  Paul's  boys,  and 
Whitefriars,  were  evolved  out  of  these  halls  of  the  court 
and  university,  occasionally  fitted  for  the  performance  of 
plays;  and  that  their  structure  and  their  practices  in  time 
reacted  on  the  conditions  ruling  the  public  stage.  On  the 
dissolution  of  the  monasteries  by  Henry  VIII  the  property  of 
the  Blackfriars  on  the  embankment  north  of  the  Thames 
and  east  of  old  Fleet  Street,  now  Bridge  Street,  reverted  to 
the  crown.  Thither  in  Edward's  day  the  office  of  the  revels 
was  removed  with  its  furniture  and  apparel  for  the  customary 
performances  at  court;  and  here,  in  all  likelihood,  the  actors 
for  court  performances  rehearsed  in  the  time  of  Sir  Thomas 
Cawarden,  Master  of  the  Revels  from  1546  to  1560.  Plays 
were  acted  at  Blackfriars  in  the  eighties.  Both  Lyly's  Cmn- 
paspe  and  Sappho  and  Phao,  printed  in  1 584,  contain  pro- 
logues  "at    Blackfriars"    as   well    as    "at   court."     So   that 


INFLUENCE   OF   LYLY  79 

when,  In  1596,  James  Burbage  acquired  the  title  to  the  old 
Priory  House  in  Blackfriars  and  refitted  it  as  a  playhouse 
he  was  really  making  no  serious  innovation.  The  new  Black- 
friars, thus  remodeled,  cost  Burbage  upwards  of  ;^8oo  and 
has  recently  been  compared  favorably  as  to  size  as  well  as 
equipment  with  the  contemporary  public  playhouse,  the  Globe. 
It  was  furnished  with  galleries  and  "lord's  rooms,"  or  private 
boxes,  and,  while  it  may  have  accommodated  no  more  than 
half  as  many  auditors  as  the  Globe,  had  an  ample  stage  and 
sufficient  tiring-rooms.  The  rental  of  Blackfriars,  on  its 
remodeling,  to  the  Children  of  the  Royal  Chapel  was  like- 
wise no  more  than  the  maintenance  of  what  must  long  have 
been  the  conditions  of  this  house. ^ 

Of  Lyly's  qualities  as  a  dramatist  and  his  place  among 
the  plaj^vrights  of  school  and  court  enough  has  been  said. 
But  Lyly's  influence  was  wider  than  this  and  more  lasting. 
It  affected  the  court  entertainments  which  continued  in  clas- 
sical plays,  pastorals,  masques,  and  other  entertainments, 
despite  much  influence  from  the  contemporary  popular  drama, 
all  the  way  to  the  closing  of  the  theaters  in  1642,  and  was  the 
true  source  of  a  distinct  and  separable  stream  of  growth, 
paralleling  the  popular  drama  of  Shakespeare.  The  first 
prominent  successor  of  Lyly,  as  the  accredited  entertainer  of 
the  court,  was  Samuel  Daniel,  who  outlived  Shakespeare 
three  years  and  wrote  favorable  specimens  of  that  exotic 
form  of  the  drama,  the  pastoral.  Overlapping  Daniel  in  his 
later  career  was  Ben  Jonson,  the  master  of  the  English 
masque.  That  the  grace  and  easy  mastery  of  the  amenities 
of  court  life  which  Lyly  shows  were  the  example,  with  much 
else,  of  both  of  these  can  admit  of  no  serious  doubt.  More 
interesting  to  us,  Lyly  profoundly  affected  the  earlier  comedy 
of  Shakespeare,  a  theme  that  will  claim,  with  the  considera- 
tion of  the  earlier  popular  drama,  our  attention  in  the  next 
chapter. 

*  On  this  whole  topic  see  the  recent  researches  of  C.  W.  Wallace 
in  Nebraska  University  Studies,  April-July,  1908,  since  amplified  in 
book  form. 


CHAPTER  VI 

MARLOWE     AND     HIS     FELLOWS     IN     POPULAR 

DRAMA 

IN  the  last  chapter  we  were  concerned  with  the  drama  of 
the  schools  and  the  court,  with  beginnings  based  on  a 
study  and  imitation  of  classical  ideals,  with  amateur  actors, 
and,  in  a  sense,  with  amateur  authors  as  well.  This  drama, 
like  most  of  the  non-dramatic  literature  of  the  age  —  the 
sonnets  and  romance  of  Sidney,  the  poetry  and  allegory  of 
Spenser,  and  the  cultivated  prose  of  Lyly  —  was  the  literature 
of  the  select  and  cultivated  few,  and  to  a  certain  degree  existed 
as  the  shibboleth  of  a  clique.  We  turn  now  to  something 
very  different,  to  the  drama  of  the  people  acted  in  inn-yards 
and  by  strolling  players,  written,  as  acted,  professionally  and 
before  long  to  develop,  in  the  plays  of  Kyd,  Marlowe,  and 
Shakespeare,  to  a  degree  of  excellence  not  hitherto  known. 

Strolling  players  and  mountebanks  are  traceable  far  back 
into  the  Middle  Ages,  and  link  on  to  the  minstrel  as  the  minstrel 
goes  farther  back  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  gleomon  or  scop.  The 
patronage  of  players'  companies  by  nobles  is  likewise  no  inno- 
vation of  Tudor  times,  though,  as  the  drama  grew  in  popularity, 
this  patronage  became  more  a  form  for  the  players'  protection 
than  the  mark  of  any  intimate  relation.  The  Earl  of  Lei- 
cester, whose  seat  of  Kenilworth  was  in  Warwickshire  near 
to  the  town  of  Stratford,  was  an  early  patron  of  actors  and 
took  a  company  abroad  with  him  as  early  as  1585.  By  some 
this  company  has  been  thought  to  continue  into  that  which 
Shakespeare  afterwards  joined,  variously  known  as  Lord 
Strange's,  the  Chamberlain's,  the  King's,  and  by  other  titles 
according  to  its  successive  patrons.  By  others  the  first  step 
in  this  succession  has  been  denied,  and  the  origin  of  Shake- 
speare's company  referred  to  a  troupe  under  the  patronage  of 
Lord   Strange,  mentioned   as  performing  "feats  of  tumbling 

80 


\ 


PROFESSIONAL   PLAYERS  8i 

and  activity"  at  court  in  January,  1580.*  The  history  of 
Ehzabethan  companies  of  professional  players  is  intricate 
and  difficult.  The  same  company  not  only  passed  through  a 
succession  of  patrons,  some  troupes  disappearing,  others 
arising,  joining  and  falling  apart,  but  their  personnel  was 
constantly  changing,  alike  as  to  actors  and  as  to  the  play- 
wrights who  were  variously  employed  among  them.  Thus, 
to  look  forward  no  further  than  1595,  there  was  the  Queen's 
company  at  the  Theater  in  Shoreditch,  Oxford's  men  and  later 
the  Earl  of  Pembroke's  at  the  Curtain  near  by.  Ths  Sussex 
men  were  acting  by  1591  at  the  Rose  and  the  Admiral's  in  the 
city.  Marlowe  wrote  chiefly  for  this  last-named  company; 
Greene,  Lodge,  Peele,  and  Kyd  for  the  Queen's,  but  not 
wholly.  Lord  Strange's  men,  the  companions  of  Shakespeare, 
were  as  yet  perhaps  unfurnished  with  a  regular  playhouse  and 
appear  to  have  performed  at  the  Cross-Keys,  a  tavern  in  the 
city.  In  1592  we  hear  of  this  company  acting  at  the  Rose, 
a  new  theater  on  the  Bankside.  Later,  known  as  the 
Chamberlain's  company,  it  acted  at  the  Theater,  then  briefly 
at  the  Curtain,  until  its  final  removal  to  the  new  Globe  in 
1598. 

The  circumstances  of  the  building  of  the  Globe  theater 
and  the  formation  of  a  theatrical  company  to  act  there  have 
recently  been  placed  in  a  new  light  by  the  researches  of  Pro- 
fessor Wallace,  whose  discoveries  have  already  been  alluded 
to  in  this  book.  It  appears  that  when,  in  1597,  the  Burbage 
brothers  met  with  difficulty  in  renewing  the  lease  for  the 
ground  on  which  the  Theater  stood,  they  determined  to  exer- 
cise a  right,  reserved  in  their  deed,  and  remove  to  the  Bank- 
side  the  material  out  of  which  the  building  had  been  con- 
structed. To  insure  the  success  of  this  venture  they  associated 
with  them  five  actors  —  Shakespeare,  Heming,  Philips,  Pope, 
and  Kempe —  and  organized  "a  sharing  company,  the  first 
of  its  kind  in  the  theatrical  world."  The  new  lease  of  the  site 
for  the  Globe  was  so  arranged  that  the  two  Burbage  brothers 
acquired  half  of  it,  the  five  associated  actors  the  other  half, 
the    total    rental    being    £1^  los.     Shakespeare    thus    held 

*W.  W.  Greg,  Henslowe's  Diary,  Part  II,  68-71. 


82  EARLIER   POPULAR   DRAMA 

originally  a  tenth  Interest  in  the  Globe;  and  this  continued 
up  to  1610,  when  the  five  actors  admitted  Henry  Condell  to 
a  share,  reducing  the  share  in  the  whole  of  each  of  the  now  six 
owners  of  the  actors'  half  to  one  twelfth.  In  16 12  a  further 
admission  of  William  Osteler  as  a  sharer  reduced  the  share 
of  each  of  the  now  seven  actor-sharers  of  the  Globe  to  one 
fourteenth.  The  Burbages  continued  to  own  their  half  as 
before.  To  continue  this  digression  into  Shakespeare's 
relations  to  Blackfriars,  in  1608  this  house,  also  the  property 
of  the  Burbages,  was  leased  to  the  Children  of  the  Oueen's 
Revels  who  were  suppressed  as  a  company  in  that  year  by  the 
order  of  King  James.  Immediately  after,  Richard  Burbage, 
the  owner,  leased  the  Blackfriars  to  a  theatrical  company  of 
seven  persons,  retaining  a  seventh  both  for  himself  and  his 
brother  Cuthbert,  and  giving  five  others,  among  them  Shake- 
speare, Heming,  and  Condell,  each  a  share  like  his  ow^n.  The 
total  rental  was  £^0  a  year.  In  16 14  Shakespeare  owned  one 
seventh  of  the  Blackfriars  and  one  fourteenth  of  the  Globe. 
The  original  cost  of  these  shares  was  merely  the  rent  of  the 
ground  and  the  obligations  for  building  and  management. 
They  became  in  time  very  valuable;  but  the  statement  in  the 
legal  complaint  of  the  time  from  which  these  facts  were 
gathered  that  the  value  of  such  a  share  as  Shakespeare's  in 
each  of  these  theaters  was  ;^300  is  of  course  excessive,  as  such 
statements  for  claim  of  damage  always  are.  It  may  be  noted 
in  passing  that  Heming  and  Condell  are  the  fellow-actors  of 
Shakespeare  who  signed  their  names  to  the  prefatory  matter 
of  the  folio  edition  of  his  collected  works  in  1623.^ 

But  if  we  are  to  appreciate  the  conditions  under  which  the 
popular  drama  sprang  into  life  in  Elizabeth's  time,  we  must 
understand  the  nature  of  the  playhouses  of  the  day  and  learn 
under  what  circumstances  they  came  to  be  built.  Earlier 
popular  theatrical  performances  followed  the  traditions  of 
wandering  minstrels  and  were  acted  for  the  most  part  in  taverns 
or  other  public  places,  not  infrequently  in  yards  and  open 
spaces.  The  inn-yard  is  the  original  of  the  Elizabethan 
popular  playhouse;    and  the  common  features  of  the  inn  were 

^  See  C.  W.  Wallace  in  The  Times,  October  2  and  4,  1909. 


LONDON  AND  THE  PLAYHOUSES  83 

reproduced  when  structures  intended  specifically  for  the  public 
acting  of  plays  came  to  be  built. 

Let  us  turn,  however,  first  to  a  consideration  of  the  ground. 
Elizabethan  London  w^as  to  our  modern  ideas  a  small  city, 
certainly  not  much  exceeding  a  hundred  thousand  inhabitants. 
It  lay  along  the  Thames,  then  a  clear  and  swiftly  flowing 
stream,  from  the  Tower  to  Temple  Bar,  and,  like  most  medie- 
val towns,  was  surrounded  by  a  wall.  London  was  ruled  by  a 
lord  mayor,  elected  yearly,  and  by  a  council  which  was  made 
up  of  men  prominent  in  the  trade  guilds  of  the  city,  A 
certain  gravity  and  seriousness  naturally  characterized  such 
"city  fathers,"  and  their  care  extended  to  the  minuter  welfare 
of  the  citizens.  For  this  reason  quite  as  much  as  because 
many  of  the  citizens  were  Puritan  in  their  leanings,  the 
theater  was  never  approved  in  the  councils  of  the  lord  mayor. 
For  aside  from  the  vanity  and  ungodliness  that  they  found  in 
many  plays,  they  recognized  in  such  concourses  of  the  dis- 
orderly element  of  the  city,  a  menace  to  the  public  peace  and 
(most  important  of  all)  to  the  public  health.  The  plague  in 
Shakespeare's  age  was  a  very  real  danger;  and  the  general 
ignorance  of  hygienic  rules  and  popular  carelessness  in  matters 
of  cleanliness  rendered  it  at  times  a  veritable  terror.  Laws 
were  passsed  closing  both  churches  and  playhouses  when  the 
mortality  from  the  plague  rose  to  a  certain  percentage;  and, 
when  buildings  for  theatrical  purposes  were  projected,  the 
lord  mayor  succeeded  in  forbidding  the  erection  of  any  such 
building  within  the  precincts  of  the  city.  His  jurisdiction 
however  stopped  without  the  several  gates  in  the  city  walls 
and  at  the  middle  point  of  London  Bridge,  which  alone  con- 
nected London  with  Southwark  on  the  Surrey  side  or  Bank- 
side.  Under  these  conditions,  we  find  the  earliest  playhouses 
just  beyond  the  walls  or  across  the  river  in  Southwark.  Thus 
the  Theater,  the  first  regular  playhouse  to  be  erected  in  Lon- 
don, was  built  in  the  parish  of  Shoreditch  in  1576,  and  near 
it  in  Moorfields  the  Curtain  arose  in  the  following  year. 
Shoreditch  was  a  borough  on  the  main  thoroughfare  north, 
without  Bishopsgate.  The  Theater  was  built  by  James  Bur- 
bage,  father  of  the  famous  actor,  Richard.     It  was  demol- 


84  EARLIER   POPULAR   DRAMA 

ished  in  1598  and  the  materials  used  in  part  for  the  building 
of  the  Globe.  But  the  Bankside  was  soon  recognized  as  a 
more  favorable  location  for  the  erection  of  playhouses.  The 
Bankside  had  long  been  in  use  as  a  playground  and  place  of 
license  and  diversion.  Bull-baiting  and  bear-baiting  were 
among  its  amusements  and  the  two  old  arenas  for  these  pur- 
poses existed  long  before  the  theaters.  The  Globe,  the  Rose, 
the  Hope,  and  the  Swan  were  the  four  Elizabethan  theaters 
of  the  Bankside.  All  of  them  were  built  within  the  decade  of 
the  nineties  and,  in  the  order  named  above,  they  ranged 
irregularly  along  the  river  shore  to  the  right  of  him  who  crossed 
London  Bridge  from  the  city  or  to  the  left  of  the  bridge  and 
the  Church  of  St.  Saviour's,  as  one  looks  at  a  map  or  a  view 
of  old  London.  There  were  other  theaters  besides  these,  the 
one  at  Newington  Butts,  back  from  the  river  in  Southwark; 
the  Fortune,  a  new  and  fine  theater  for  its  day,  built  in  1600 
by  Edward  AUeyn  in  St.  Giles,  Cripplegate,  in  rivalry  with 
Shakespeare  and  his  Globe.  And  there  were  the  private 
theaters  of  Blackfriars,  Whitefriars,  and  that  of  the  boys  of 
St.  Paul's;  but  these  latter  ones  do  not  concern  us  here. 

The  last  few  years  have  witnessed  much  interest  in  the 
construction  of  these  old  Elizabethan  playhouses  and  in  the 
probable  manner  in  which  Elizabethan  plays  were  staged. 
Unfortunately  the  evidence  at  hand  is  sparse  and,  what  is 
worse,  at  times,  conflicting:  moreover,  it  has  been  occasionally 
somewhat  unwisely  assumed  that  it  is  possible  to  reduce  the 
whole  problem  to  a  typical  stage.  Undoubtedly  the  play- 
houses of  Elizabeth  differed  as  the  theaters  of  to-day  and  what 
may  have  been  true  of  one  may  possibly  not  have  been  true  of 
all.  This  is  not  the  place  for  discussion;  of  some  things, 
however,  we  may  feel  reasonably  sure. 

The  Elizabethan  public  playhouse  was  ordinarily  a  cir- 
cular or  octagonal  structure  built  about  an  open  space  or 
yard  to  which  there  was  but  one  public  entrance  at  which 
"gate  money"  might  be  charged.  Within,  the  yard  was  open 
to  the  sky  and  here  the  "groundlings"  as  they  were  called 
stood  to  see  the  play.  As  to  three  fourths  of  its  circumference 
the  yard  was  surrounded  with  galleries,  two  or  three,  and  in 


THE   ELIZABETHAN   PLAYHOUSE  85 

them  sat  the  auditors  of  better  station;  although  the  highest 
gallery  must  have  been  as  undesirable  then  as  to-day.  In 
the  fourth  part  of  the  circumference  and  opposite  the  entrance 
door,  the  stage  was  situated,  jutting  far  out  into  the  yard  so 
that  the  groundlings  stood  on  three  sides  of  it.  The  stage  of 
Shakespeare's  time  was  primarily  a  platform  for  declamation, 
not,  as  with  us,  a  place  for  a  picture  set  in  a  frame.  The 
roof  over  the  stage  was  supported  by  two  pillars  or  "pilasters" 
as  they  were  called;  but  they  appear  to  have  stood  back  from 
the  front  of  the  stage,  and  it  is  doubtful  whether  they  were 
near  the  two  edges  or  not,  rather,  placed  closer  together  so  as 
to  produce  the  effect  of  a  structure  near  the  middle  of  the 
stage  and  thus  leave  space  for  free  action  not  only  in  front 
but  around  each  pillar  at  the  side.  There  has  also  been  much 
question  as  to  whether  or  not  a  curtain  was  strung  between 
the  pilasters.  Certainly  no  drop  curtain,  such  as  we  now  use, 
was  employed  on  a  public  stage  before  the  Restoration.  As 
there  are  many  references  in  the  stage  directions  of  old  plays 
to  curtains  (or  traverses  as  they  were  sometimes  called),  it 
has  been  thought  that,  if  they  were  not  stretched  between  the 
pilasters,  they  were  draped  to  hang  beneath  the  balcony  or 
gallery  that  ran  across  the  back  of  the  stage,  thus  dividing 
the  stage  into  the  part  before  the  pilasters,  the  part  between 
the  pilasters  and  the  curtain,  and  the  corridor  or  alcove  under 
the  balcony.  The  opinion  of  the  present  writer  leans  to  a 
curtain  between  the  pilasters,  thus  bringing  out  the  action  on 
the  back  part  of  the  stage  to  a  point  immediately  behind  them 
rather  than  concealing  it  in  the  shadow  of  the  balcony.  As 
to  the  balcony  itself,  it,  too,  was  furnished  with  curtains  and 
was  employed  wherever  an  upper  window,  a  battlement,  or 
other  eminence  was  necessary  to  the  action.  The  music,  of 
the  use  of  which  between  the  acts  and  elsewhere  there  is 
abundant  proof,  was  doubtless  at  times  placed  in  a  part  of 
of  the  balcony  which  was  in  the  nature  of  a  gallery  and  may 
have  been  arranged  diagonally  at  its  two  extremities.^ 

Among  the  many  questions  concerning  the  Elizabethan 
stage   none   has  been  waged   more   fiercely  than  that  which 

*  See  W.  Archer  in  The  Quarterly  Review,  April,  1908. 


86  EARLIER  POPULAR  DRAMA 

concerns  the  presence  or  absence  of  scenery  on  the  stage. 
On  the  one  hand  all  scenery  has  been  denied;  but  we  hear  in 
at  least  two  authentic  passages  of  its  existence  in  such  a  phrase 
as  Jonson's  (1600)  "'Slid,  the  boy  takes  me  for  a  piece  of 
perspective,"  and  in  Dekker's  words  (1609):  "Stand  at  the 
helm  and  steer  the  passage  of  the  scenes."^  Moreover  it  is 
well  known  that  there  were  abundance  of  scenic  properties 
at  court  in  times  far  earlier  than  Shakespeare's.  It  must  be 
allowed  that  there  was  no  such  system  of  perspective  by  means 
of  back  curtain  and  side  flies  as  we  have  now  in  use;  but  it  is 
defiant  of  both  evidence  and  probabilty  to  deny  to  the  Eliza- 
bethan popular  stage  many  scenic  properties  of  considerable 
size  and  variety.  Thrones  of  state,  trees,  buildings  of  im- 
portance enough  to  be  designated  "castles,"  hangings  suggest- 
ing the  rigging  of  a  ship,  even  landscapes  and  cities  find  men- 
tion again  and  again,  and  v^'e  should  be  impelled  to  believe 
in  the  use  of  such  properties,  were  the  evidence  less  certain 
than  it  is,  from  the  influence  that  performances  at  court  must 
in  time  have  exerted  on  the  popular  stage. 

That  the  use  of  properties  such  as  these  was  often  very 
crude  and  insufficient  according  to  our  modern  ideas  must  be 
granted.  The  Elizabethan  stage  has  been  thought  by  some 
to  have  inherited  from  medieval  conditions  the  practice  of 
what  has  been  called  simultaneous  scenery.  Heavier  proper- 
ties must  frequently  have  remained  on  the  stage  though  often 
incongruous  to  the  action  which  appears  at  times  to  have 
moved  from  one  part  of  the  stage  to  another.  When  the  action 
was  about  the  throne  set  in  the  center,  a  presence  chamber 
was  conjured  with  imagination's  inward  eye.  When  the 
action  sidled  to  a  tree  in  a  box  to  the  left  it  was  transferred  to 
the  country-side.  To  escape  this  incongruity  (to  our  modern 
ideas),  some  have  imagined  that  heavy  properties  were  con- 
fined to  the  space  back  of  the  curtain  into  which  they  might 
be  lugged  from  the  tiring-room  and  concealed  by  the  curtain 
when  not  in  use.  Attempt  has  even  been  made  to  divide 
Shakespeare's  plays  into  a  strict  alternation  of  scenes  before 

^  See  Gifford-Cunningham,  Jonson^  ii,  210;  The  Gulls'  Hornbook, 
Grosart,  Dekker,  ii,  248. 


PROPERTIES  AND  STAGING  87 

the  curtain  and  scenes  behind,  to  allow  of  such  shifts  of  the 
properties.  However,  of  late  it  must  be  confessed  that  a  very 
good  case  has  been  made  out  for  a  liberal  modification  of 
some  such  system,  based  on  a  study  of  the  staging  of  theatri- 
cal productions  from  the  medieval  times  up  and,  more  espe- 
cially, from  the  Restoration  backward.*  None  the  less  we  may 
believe  that  not  a  little  of  the  setting  of  the  Elizabethan  stage 
was  content  to  symbolize  the  scene  by  some  important  object 
suggesting  it,  and  to  be  little  hurt  by  incongruities  which 
would  destroy  the  illusion  to  modern  auditors.  With  the 
intervention  of  incidental  music  and  the  employment,  where 
there  was  need,  of  the  curtain  which  divided  the  rear  stage 
from  the  front,  the  action  of  an  Elizabethan  play  must  have 
been  carried  on  continuously  all  over  the  stage  and  gallery. 
Indeed,  those  who  have  seen  Shakespeare  simply  staged  with 
next  to  no  scenery  and  acted  without  division  by  waits  between 
acts  or  scenes,  have  recognized  how  much  our  old  drama  has 
to  gain  by  a  reversion  to  earlier  and  less  elaborate  methods  of 
histrionic  representation. 

As  to  the  acting  of  an  Elizabethan  play,  it  is  to  be  remem- 
bered that  the  performance  was  for  men  and  acted  by  men. 
The  employment  of  women  to  act  on  the  stage  of  the  day 
w^ould  have  been  thought  a  disgrace  and  a  scandal.  In  fact, 
in  stricter  Elizabethan  times  no  woman  of  character  would 
think  of  attending  a  common  playhouse;  and  when  later,  she 
did,  she  wore  a  mask.  Women's  roles  were  taken  by  boys 
who  appear  to  have  become  remarkably  skilful  in  their  diffi- 
cult profession,  though  none  ever  attained  the  rank  of  such 
men  as  Burbage  and  Edward  Alleyn,  the  leaders  in  male  parts 
and  the  creators  of  the  chief  roles  of  Shakespeare  and  Marlowe. 
The  performance  of  a  play,  in  old  times,  must  often  have  been 
a  very  disorderly  proceeding,  for  gallants  were  tolerated  on 
the  very  stage  itself  and  disturbances  often  arose  among  the 
auditors,  breaking  up  the  performance  and  ending  at  times 
in  affrays  and  bloodshed.  It  is  impossible  not  to  sympathize 
with  the  mayor  and  his  council  in  their  honest  endeavors  to 
abate  such  nuisances  and  in  their  wider  looks  askant  at  the 

^  See  especially  V.  E.  Albright,    The  Shakesperian  Stage,   1909. 


88  EARLIER   POPULAR   DRAMA 

theater,  in  general,  as  an  innovation  of  doubtful  character. 
The  Elizabethan  drama  could  not  plead,  like  the  old  sacred 
drama,  that  it  instructed  men  in  the  gospel.  It  could  not  claim, 
like  the  morality,  that  it  existed  to  teach  right  living,  or  like 
the  Latin  school  plays  to  impart  confidence  to  the  boys  who 
acted  and  improve  their  Latin  pronunciation.  The  new 
drama  had  no  excuse  for  its  existence,  and  existed  only  to 
amuse.  There  was  a  long  struggle  between  the  city  and  the 
court  about  the  professional  players  and  their  theaters,  the 
city  passing  laws  against  actors  and  plays,  pleading  their 
wickedness  and  licentiousness,  the  danger  to  the  public  peace 
and  to  the  public  health.  On  the  other  hand  the  court  pro- 
tected the  actors,  who  commonly  gave  as  an  excuse  for  their 
popular  performances  that  they  must  practise  if  they  were  to 
perform  before  the  queen,  and,  claiming  the  protection  of 
some  noble  as  patron,  thus  escaped  the  rigor  of  the  laws  against 
"rogues,  vagabonds,  and  common  players." 

As  time  went  on  the  actors  thrived  and  rose  in  the  social 
scale.  In  Greene's  tract  A  Groatsworth  of  Wit  Purchased 
with  a  Million  of  Repentance,  notorious  for  its  attack  on 
Shakespeare,  we  find  the  following  little  colloquy  on  this 
subject: 

What  is  your  profession  ?  said  Roberto.  Truly,  sir,  said  he,  I 
am  a  player.  A  player!  quoth  Roberto,  I  took  you  rather  for  a 
gentleman  of  great  living;  for,  if  by  outward  habit  men  should  be 
censured,  I  tell  you  you  would  be  taken  for  a  substantial  man.  So 
am  I,  where  I  dwell,  quoth  the  player,  reputed  able  at  my  proper  cost 
to  build  a  windmill.  What  though  the  world  once  went  hard  with 
me,  when  I  was  fain  to  carry  my  fardel  a  foot-a-back;  .  .  .  it  is 
otherwise  now;  for  my  very  share  in  playing  apparel  will  not  be  sold 
for  two  hundred  pounds. 

The  player  here  represented  may  have  been  one  Robert 
Wilson  of  the  queen's  company  of  actors  in  1583,  the  author 
of  three  or  four  extant  plays  in  which  the  old  morality  is 
mingled  with  newer  ideas.  Elsewhere,  he  tells  us  "the  twelve 
labors  of  Hercules  have  I  terribly  thundered  on  the  stage  and 
placed  three  scenes  of  the  devil  on  the  highway  to  heaven." 
Another    early  popular    actor  and    playwright  was  Richard 


PRE-SHAKESPEAREAN   PLAYS  89 

Tarlton,  who  was  famed  for  his  clown's  parts  and  for  antics 
and  humors  that  found  a  place  in  the  jest-books  of  the  time. 
Tarlton  was  of  the  humblest  origin  and  in  the  height  of  his 
success  kept  a  tavern  in  Gracechurch  Street.  He  died  in 
1588,  the  year  of  the  Armada,  but  he  was  long  outlived  by  the 
fame  of  his  extemporal  wit,  a  variety  of  extemporaneous  em- 
broidering on  the  part  assigned  that  drew  from  Shakespeare 
in  later  times  the  terse  words  of  Hamlet:  "Let  those  that 
play  your  clowns  speak  no  more  than  is  set  down  for  them." 

Not  only  is  the  number  of  these  early  pre-Shakespearean 
plays  of  the  common  stages  very  great,  but  their  variety  is 
extraordinary.  Besides  the  English  historical  subjects  already 
suggested  in  Tarlton's  Famous  Victories  of  Henry  V  (a  crude 
production,  not  unknown  to  Shakespeare),  and  plays  like  the 
anonymous  Troublesome  Reign  of  King  John  (another  Shake- 
spearean "source"),  there  was  a  domestic  comedy  like  Grim 
the  Collier  of  Croyden,  or  Tom  Tyler,  a  diverting  interlude  in 
which  an  attempt  to  tame  a  shrewish  wife  proves  amusingly 
abortive.  There  was  also  domestic  drama,  represented  in  the 
able  and  effective  Arden  of  Feversham,  a  tragedy  which  some 
have  thought  not  unworthy  to  assign  to  Shakespeare.  And 
there  was,  besides  the  semi-moralities  of  Wilson,  romantic 
drama  dealing  with  knights  and  fair  ladies,  Greene's  Orlando 
Furioso  and  The  Thracian  fVonder,  turned  to  probably  satiri- 
cal references  in  such  a  play  as  Fair  Em,  the  Miller  s  Daughter 
of  Manchester.  Without  pursuing  this  enumeration  further 
here,  it  is  demonstrable  that  nearly  all  the  notable  varieties  of 
the  Elizabethan  drama  were  already  presaged  in  rudimentary 
form  before  the  morality  went  out  of  vogue.  Not  only  did 
Shakespeare  invent  no  solitary  kind  of  play  not  already  well 
known  to  the  stage  before  him;  but  no  one  of  his  great  prede- 
cessors —  Marlowe,  Greene,  Lyly,  Peele,  or  Kyd  —  invented 
a  new  variety  of  drama.  It  is  important  to  recognize  how 
fully  the  soil  had  been  prepared  for  the  great  harvest  that  was 
to  follow,  how  an  humble  but  by  no  means  despicable  growth 
had  already  covered  these  previous  times,  and  how  the  play- 
house, the  organized  company,  an  audience  eager  for  the 
drama  and  accustomed  to  it,  all  had  been  created  before  the 


90  EARLIER   POPULAR   DRAMA 

great  and  memorable  playwrights  of  the  time  came  forward  to 
assume  their  inheritance. 

The  three  great  influences  that  made  Elizabethan  drama 
are  now  before  us.  First,  the  influence  of  the  classics  — 
Plautus  for  comedy,  Seneca  for  tragedy  —  exemplihed  in 
Ralph  Roister  Doister  on  the  one  hand  and  Gorbodiic  on  the 
other.  Secondly,  the'  influence  of  the  popular  vernacular 
farce,  English  to  the  core  though  touched  by  French  ex- 
ample: in  comedy  illustrated  in  Gammer  Gurton  or  Tom 
Tyler,  and  pure  of  any  foreign  contact  in  the  murder  play, 
Arden  of  Feversham.  Thirdly,  the  influence  of  Italy  and  the 
spirit  of  romance,  already  suggested  in  Lyly's  courtly  plays, 
in  Tancred,  and  in  Whetstone's  Promos  and  Cassandra,  and 
soon  to  become  the  distinguishing  characteristic  of  the  great 
dramas  of  Marlowe,  Shakespeare,  and  Webster. 

With  Lyly  and  Peele,  it  is  customary  to  place  Lodge, 
Greene,  and  Nash  as  well  as  Kyd  and  Marlowe,  to  call  them 
indiscriminately  "university  wits"  or  by  a  like  designation 
to  dilate  upon  their  short  and  abandoned  lives  and  the  precise 
similarlity  of  their  alleged  careers.  Kyd  was  not  a  university 
man;  and  Lyly,  at  least,  was  no  Bohemian.  Lodge,  despite 
early  escapades,  lived  far  into  the  reign  of  James,  a  respectable 
physician,  and  wrote,  besides  Marius  and  Sylla,  hardly  any 
drama  certainly  traceable  as  his.  Nash's  part,  too,  in  the 
drama  is  slight,  and  consists  of  one  masque-like  production. 
Summer's  Last  Will  and  Testament,oi  Dido,  Queen  of  Carthage, 
a  tragedy  written  in  conjunction  with  Marlowe,  and  a  lost 
Latin  comedy.  Nothing  could  be  more  uncritical  than  the 
habitual  grouping  of  these  "predecessors  of  Shakespeare." 

Of  Peele  enough  has  been  said  above  as  to  how  he  trans- 
ferred his  interests  in  the  drama,  first  from  the  university  to 
court  and  thence  to  the  popular  stage  of  Wilson  and  Tarlton. 
Peele's  art  was  imitative,  as  we  have  seen,  his  life  dissolute, 
his  end  untimely;  but  his  satirical  consciousness  of  the  ab- 
surdities of  the  popular  plays  about  him  —  plays  that  he  imi- 
tated in  David  and  Bethsahe  and  especially  in  Edward  I, 
while   he   parodied   them    in   The   Old    Wives   Tale    and    in 


ROBERT  GREENE  91 

Locrine  —  is    not  without   its    interest  to  the  history  of  the 
drama. 

Greene,  too,  was  a  man  of  disordered  life,  although  the 
candor  of  his  revelations  concerning  himself  and  the  circum- 
stance of  his  enmity  to  Shakespeare  have  conspired  perhaps 
somewhat  to  exaggerate  his  bad  name.  Greene  was  a  busy 
pamphleteer  as  well  as  playwright,  and  death  overtook  him, 
as  it  overtook  Marlowe,  in  the  midst  of  his  sins.  Greene 's 
work,  like  of  Peek's,  was  imitative  and  eclectic.  In  A  Look- 
ing Glass  for  London  and  England,  which  he  wrote  with 
Thomas  Lodge,  he  gives  us  work  of  the  morality  type,  little 
above  the  plane  of  Wilson,  though  superior  in  execution. 
In  Orlando  Furioso  he  outdid  the  excesses  of  the  heroical 
romance;  in  Alphonsus  of  A r agon  he  essayed  the  "high  as- 
tounding terms"  of  Marlowe's  Tamhurlaine.  None  the  less 
Greene's  genuine  contribution  to  Elizabethan  drama  is  both 
considerable  and  peculiar.  In  The  Scottish  Llistory  of 
'James  IV  he  has  given  us  a  serious  comedy  of  very  consider- 
able worth,  memorable  for  the  fine  and  pathetic  pictures  of 
true  womanhood  represented  in  both  his  heroine,  Ida,  and 
the  queen.  In  Friar  Bacon  he  dramatized  the  story  of  that 
famous  English  necromancer  and  contrasted  his  white  and 
harmless  magic  with  the  black  art  of  Marlowe's  Faustus, 
which  was  at  the  moment  holding  the  stage.  Though  truer 
to  nature  and  more  peculiarly  Greene's  own  are  the  charming 
scenes  in  this  comedy  which  tell  of  the  love  and  courtship  of 
the  Fair  Maid  of  Fressingfield  who  is  wooed  for  his  prince 
but  won  for  himself  by  the  young  Earl  Lacy,  after  a  manner 
familiar  to  American  readers  of  Longfellow's  Courtship  of 
Miles  Standish.  Equally  successful  and  characteristic  of 
(jreene,  is  his  apotheosis  of  the  English  yeoman  in  George  a 
Green  or  the  Pinner  of  Wakefield.  This  hero  impounds  an 
earl's  horses  that  have  trespassed  on  the  town's  corn,  defeats 
Robin  Hood  himself  at  quarterstaff,  and  cleverly  traps  and 
captures  the  king's  enemies.  For  all  these  services  King 
Edward,  who  happens  that  way,  asks  George  to  demand  what 
he  will.     And  his  reply  is  that  the  king  may  use  his  influence 


92  EARLIER   POPULAR   DRAMA 

to  induce  old  Grimes,  his  "leman's  father,"  to  consent  to  that 
maiden's  marriage  with  him.     This  granted,  the  king  adds: 

Now,  George,  it  rests  I  gratify  thy  worth: 

Kneel  down,  George: 

George.      What  will  your  majesty  do  ? 

Edward.     Dub  thee  a  knight,  George. 

George.       I  beseech  your  grace,  grant  me  one  thing. 

Edward.     What  is  it  ? 

George.       Then  let  me  live  and  die  a  yeoman  still: 

So  was  my  father,  so  must  live  his  son. 

For  'tis  more  credit  to  men  of  base  degree. 

To  do  great  deeds,  than  men  of  dignity. 

Can  we  not  imagine  how  at  this  the  pit  must  have  risen  to  a 
man  ?  And  what  could  be  a  better  example  of  the  truly  popu- 
lar nature  of  this  new  people's  drama  t 

Could  Greene  have  lived  and  led  a  less  disordered  life, 
could  he  have  developed  leisurely  and  harmoniously  instead 
of  driving  an  overworked  pen  for  bread,  Shakespeare  might 
not  have  been  without  a  rival  in  comedy  worthy  his  best 
efforts.  The  pathetic  story  of  Greene's  end,  his  miserable 
death  from  his  own  excesses,  his  touching  letter  to  his  wronged 
and  deserted  wife  that  she  see  those  paid  who  had  buried  him 
out  of  pity,  is  known  to  every  student,  as  well  as  his  notorious 
address  to  his  quondam  acquaintance,  Marlowe,  Peele,  and 
Lodge  "who  spend  their  time  in  making  plays."  It  was 
sheer  envy  that  prompted  the  dying  Greene  rancorously  to 
attack  the  rising  young  Shakespeare,  to  call  him  "an  upstart 
crow  beautified  with  our  feathers,"  to  imagine  Shakespeare 
so  elated  with  his  own  success  that  he  had  become  "in  his  own 
conceit  the  only  shake-scene  in  a  country."  But  there  was 
another  side,  Greene  was  a  genuine  poet,  an  able  playwright, 
a  successful  pamphleteer,  all  this  despite  his  reckless  life  and 
wasted  time.  Such  a  man  must  have  known  of  possibilities 
within  which  we  can  not  reconstruct  from  the  broken  remains 
of  his  work.  Infinitely  above  the  painstaking  achievements  of 
mediocrity  is  the  comparative  failure  of  an  irregular  genius 
such  as  Greene's. 


THOMAS   KYD  93 

English  romantic  tragedy  reached  fruition  all  but  simul- 
taneously in  two  great  plays,  Tamhurlatne  in  two  parts  by 
Christopher  Marlowe,  and  The  Spanish  Tragedy  by  Thomas 
Kyd.  Both  plays  were  certainly  on  the  stage  a  year  or  more 
before  the  coming  of  the  Armada;  but  which  is  the  earlier 
has  never  been  absolutely  determined,  for  neither  exhibits  the 
slightest  borrowing  from  the  other  and  each  expresses  an 
independent  phase  of  tragic  art. 

Until  recently  we  have  known  very  little  of  Thomas  Kyd; 
now  we  can  tell  —  thanks  to  Professor  Schick  of  Munich  and 
to  Mr.  Boas  and  his  researches  —  that  Kyd  was  born  in  1558, 
in  London,  and  attended  the  Merchant  Tailors'  School  where 
Lodge  and  Spenser  were  among  his  school-fellows.  Kyd's 
father  was  a  scrivener  or  lawyer's  clerk  and  Thomas  may  have 
followed  that  "trade  of  noverint"  as  it  was  called.  He  ap- 
pears not  to  have  gone  to  either  university,  but  was  admitted 
to  the  literary  circle  of  the  Sidneys  and  Pembrokes  and  en- 
joyed the  intimate  acquaintance  of  Marlowe.  The  poets  at 
one  time  occupied  together  the  same  room,  a  circumstance 
that  drew  Kyd  into  suspicion  of  sharing  also  in  Marlowe's 
alleged  atheistical  opinions.  Kyd  was  even  imprisoned  on 
charges  connected  with  this  association  and  lost  all  chances  of 
patronage  therefore.  Indeed,  whether  for  this  cause  or  for 
some  other,  Kyd  was  disowned  by  his  parents,  who  renounced 
the  administration  of  the  goods  of  their  deceased  son  in  De- 
cember, 1594. 

The  height  of  Kyd's  activity  as  a  dramatist  was  concen- 
trated within  a  very  few  years,  those  between  1584  and  1589. 
The  Spanish  Tragedy  yvzs  doubtless  his  earliest  dramatic  work 
and  the  companion  play  called  The  First  Part  of  Jeronimo  is 
best  considered  not  Kyd's,  but  a  production  subsequently 
written  by  another  on  account  of  the  popularity  of  Kyd's 
tragedy.  A  second  and  less  successful  drama  of  much  the 
type  of  The  Spanish  Tragedy  is  Soltman  and  Perceda,  dating 
1588,  and  assuredly  of  Kyd's  authorship.  The  translation 
of  a  tragedy  by  Gamier  called  Cornelia,  published  in  1592, 
and  a  lost  play  on  Hamlet,  1587,  complete  the  tale  of  Kyd's 
dramatic  labors. 


94  EARLIER   POPULAR   DRAMA 

The  Spanish  Tragedy  is  the  most  typical  of  the  tragedies 
of  Kyd.  The  story  details  the  revenge  of  a  father,  the  Mar- 
shal Hieronimo,  for  the  murder  of  his  son,  who  has  been  slain 
under  circumstances  that  leave  the  father  uncertain  of  the 
slayer  and  incapable  of  redress.  Madness,  actual  or  pre- 
tended, and  hesitancy  to  act  add  to  the  difficulties  of  Hieron- 
imo; but,  discerning  at  length  in  the  Prince  Lorenzo  the  true 
instigator  of  the  murder,  and  with  revenge  for  that  reason  even 
more  than  ever  beyond  his  reach,  Hieronimo  pulls  down  gen- 
eral ruin  on  his  enemies  and  himself,  in  a  play  devised  to 
bring  about  the  catastrophe.  The  interest  of  The  Spanish 
Tragedy  centers  in  the  vital  personage  Hieronimo.  This 
became  one  of  the  favorite  roles  of  Edward  Alleyn  and  was 
revised  and  amplified  on  revival  by  Ben  Jonson.  The  popu- 
larity of  Kyd's  tragedy  lasted  a  generation;  seven  quartos  up 
to  1608  and  repeated  allusions  attesting  its  vogue  and  reputa- 
tion. Nor  is  it  to  be  denied  that  this  popularity  was  deserved. 
The  Spanish  Tragedy  is  effective  melodrama,  bold,  striking, 
dramatically  efficient,  and  not  untrue  to  the  broader  outlines 
of  life.  The  text  affords  many  examples  of  the  rhetorical 
diction  so  beloved  of  the  playgoers  of  the  earlier  days  of  Eliza- 
beth and  taken  off,  not  altogether  unkindly,  by  Shakespeare 
in  the  speech  of  the  player  in  Hamlet  and  in  the  soldier's 
account  of  the  battle  at  the  opening  of  Macbeth.  The  follow- 
ing passage  is  Kyd,  not  Shakespeare: 

There  met  our  armies  in  their  proud  array: 
Both  furnished  well,  both  full  of  hope  and  fear, 
Both  menacing  alike  with  daring  shows. 
Both  vaunting  sundry  colors  of  device, 
Both  cheerly  sounding  trumpets,  drums  and  fifes, 
Both  raising  dreadful  clamors  to  the  sky. 
That  valleys,  hills,  and  rivers  made  rebound 
And  heaven  itself  was  frighted  with  the  sound. 

Now,  while  Bellona  rageth  here  and  there, 
Thick  storms  of  bullets  rain  like  winter's  hail, 
And  shivered  lances  dark  the  troubled  air; 


"THE  SPANISH  TRAGEDY"  95 

On  every  side  drop  captains  to  the  ground 

And  soldiers,  some  ill-maimed,  some  slain  outright: 

Here  falls  a  body  sundered  from  his  head; 

There  legs  and  arms  lie  bleeding  on  the  grass, 

Mingled  with  weapons  and  unboweled  steeds, 

That  scattering  over-spread  the  purple  plain. 

In  all  this  turmoil,  three  long  hours  and  more 

The  victory  to  neither  part  inclined. 

Till  Don  Andrea  with  his  brave  lanciers 

In  their  main  battle  made  so  great  a  breach 

That,  half  dismayed,  the  multitude  retired. 

Till,  Phoebus  waning  to  the  western  deep. 
Our  trumpeters  were  charged  to  sound  retreat. 

Although  the  direct  influence  of  Seneca  on  Kyd  is  patent  to 
the  most  casual  reader,  the  novel  and  apparently  original  plot 
of  The  Tragedy,  its  swift  action,  inventive  episode,  and  real 
passion  mark  something  new.  There  had  been  no  play  up  to 
its  time  alike  so  well  constructed  and  possessed  of  personages 
so  vitally  conceived. 

Another  interesting  thing  about  Kyd  is  the  unquestionable 
fact  that  he  was  the  author  of  a  play  called  Hamlet,  on  the 
stage  at  least  as  early  as  1589,  though  now  irretrievably  lost. 
This  play  appears  to  have  been  of  a  Senecan  character  and 
it  is  interesting  to  notice  that  the  situation  of  the  Hamlet  that 
we  know  and  that  of  The  Spanish  Tragedy  offers  a  striking 
parallel.  Hamlet  is  the  story  of  the  revenge  of  a  son  for  the 
murder  of  his  father;  The  Spanish  Tragedy,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  story  of  the  revenge  of  a  father  for  the  murder  of  his  son. 
In  both  the  fundamental  idea  is  revenge  under  circumstances 
justified  by  the  impossibility  of  other  redress,  revenge  height- 
ened in  difficulty  of  attainment  by  the  hesitancy  of  the  pro- 
tagonist and  by  his  real  or  pretended  madness. 

Christopher  Marlowe  was  born  at  Canterbury  in  February, 
1564,  and  was  thus  some  two  months  Shakespeare's  senior. 
His  station  in  life  was  not  much  higher,  as  his  father  was  a 
shoemaker  and  tanner,  though  he  acted  likewise  as  clerk  of 
St.  Mary's.  Marlowe  was  a  precocious  boy  and  from  the 
King's  school  at  Canterbury  he  went  up  to  Cambridge  which 


96  EARLIER   POPULAR   DRAMA 

he  finally  left  with  a  master's  degree  in  1587.  Of  his  early 
life  in  London  we  know  as  little  as  of  Shakespeare's.  It  can 
not  be  proved  that  Marlowe  was  an  actor,  but  we  know  that 
most  of  his  plays  were  written  for  the  Admiral's  company  and 
that  Alleyn  acted  in  them.  Marlowe's  career  must  have 
been  well  under  way  before  the  coming  of  the  Armada  and  it 
is  not  impossible  that  he  was  a  dramatist  of  repute  before 
he  attained  his  higher  degree  at  Cambridge.  Unlike  Shake- 
speare and  Jonson,  Marlowe  appears  not  to  have  served  an 
apprenticeship  to  the  drama,  but  leaped  to  immediate  fame  by 
that  daring  production  Tamhurlaine,  which  was  on  the  stage 
by  1587.  Thereafter  his  works  followed  year  after  year  until 
seven  dramas,  his  in  whole  or  in  part,  were  credited  to  his 
name  with  we  know  not  how  much  other  journeyman  work 
in  unacknowledged  collaboration  with  others.  Marlowe,  as 
we  make  it  out,  was  one  about  whom  men  held  definite  opin- 
ions; he  had  enemies  and  many  friends,  among  the  latter 
Raleigh  and  Sir  Thomas  Walsingham  of  Chislehurst.  Mar- 
lowe must  have  know^n  his  contemporaries,  the  plaj^^ights, 
thoroughly  well.  Nash  collaborated  with  him,  while  Shake- 
speare alludes  to  him  tenderly  in  As  You  Like  It.  Marlowe 
was  unorthodox  in  his  opinions  and  unwisely  frank  in  uttering 
them;  but  it  is  difficult  to  believe  the  author  of  Faustus  an 
atheist.  There  are  no  actual  evidences  that  Marlow^e  led  a 
loose  life,  although  the  sensuousness  of  his  poetical  imagina- 
tion is  indubitable.  He  died  prematurely  in  1593  under  cir- 
cumstances that  are  really  unknown.  The  stories  of  a  dis- 
creditable brawl  in  which  he  ended  his  life  blaspheming,  the 
allegations  as  to  his  atheism  and  abandoned  life  are  inventions 
which  have  gathered  about  his  name  since  his  death  to  adorn 
a  fanciful  example  of  the  depravity  of  the  player  and  the 
unorthodox;  and,  strange,  as  it  may  appear,  priest  and  Puritan 
combined  to  draw  the  monster. 

Seldom  has  any  poet  begun  his  career  with  so  definite  and 
purposeful  an  ideal  as  Marlowe.  If  we  are  to  judge  from  the 
conscious  pronouncement  of  the  prologue  to  Tamhurlaine, 
Marlowe  set  his  face  from  the  first  against  the  trivialities  of 


MARLOWE'S   "TAMBURLAINE"  97 

the  comic  stage,  which  he  designates  as  "such  conceits  as 
clovvnage  keeps  in  pay,"  and  against  the  old  tumbUng,  running 
measures,  illustrated  in  such  plays  as  Gammer  Gurton.  It 
was  force,  dignity,  and  passion  that  Marlowe  demanded  of  the 
romantic  drama  and  in  choosing  blank-verse  he  fixed  the 
medium  of  serious  drama  for  generations  to  come.  Tam- 
burlaine  was  a  splendid  gage  of  promise  for  a  youth  of  twenty- 
three  to  throw  down  to  his  age.  The  two  parts  of  Tamhur- 
laine  —  for  the  popularity  of  the  first  part  soon  demanded  a 
second  —  are  best  described  as  an  heroic  epic  in  dramatic 
form.  The  tale  of  the  Scythian  conqueror  of  the  eastern 
world  and  his  rise  from  a  shepherd  to  be  king  over  kings  is 
told  in  language  befitting  so  heroic  a  theme,  and  if  it  dilates 
at  time  into  the  extravagant  and  bombastic,  it  is  pervaded 
none  the  less  throughout  with  fire,  poetry,  and  genuine 
passion.  The  popularity  of  Tamburlaine  was  immediate 
and  it  .begot  in  hands  less  forcible  a  long  line  of  like 
heroical  plays. 

The  second  dramatic  venture  of  Marlowe  was  the  drama- 
tizing of  the  world-story  of  Faustus.  How  exactly  the  poet 
came  by  the  theme  is  not  altogether  clear,  as  the  earliest  ex- 
tant translation  of  the  German  Faust-huch  bears  date  1592 
and  Marlowe's  tragedy  was  certainly  on  the  stage  four  years 
earlier.  The  play,  as  we  have  it,  seems  sketchy  and  in- 
complete. Moreover,  it  is  disfigured  with  scenes  of  precisely 
the  type  of  clownage  which  Marlowe  had  so  reprobated  in  the 
prologue  of  Tamburlaine.  Yet,  with  both  these  shortcomings, 
Faustus  is  a  surprisingly  effective  tragedy  in  which  the  throes 
and  agonies  of  the  unhappy  hero  who  had  bartered  his  soul  for 
a  few  short  years  of  power  and  pleasure  in  this  world,  are  set 
forth  with  a  distinction  of  phrase,  a  quality  of  poetic  imagery 
and  a  poignant  appreciation  of  the  agony  of  hopeless  repent- 
ance unequaled  in  English  drama.  Least  justifiable  of  all 
are  quotations  from  the  dramas,  for  here  everything  depends 
on  the  situation  in  hand,  the  personages,  and  the  unity  of  the 
complete  whole;  yet,  possibly  better  in  the  following  than  in 
some  more  striking  passage,  may  the  reader  discern  alike  the 


98  EARLIER   POPULAR   DRAMA 

temper  of  Faustus  in  his  inordinate  lust  after  power  as  well 
as  the  limpid  and  effective  diction  of  Marlowe: 
Oh  what  a  world  of  profit  and  delight, 
Of  power,  of  honor,  of  omnipotence 
Is  promised  to  the  studious  artisan! 
All  things  that  move  between  the  quiet  poles 
Shall  be  at  my  command:  emperors  and  kings 
Are  but  obeyed  in  their  several  provinces. 
Nor  can  they  raise  the  wind  or  rend  the  clouds; 
But  his  dominion  that  exceeds  in  this 
Stretcheth  as  far  as  doth  the  mind  of  man; 
A  sound  magician  is  a  mighty  god: 
Here,  Faustus,  tire  thy  brains  to  gain  a  deity. 

But  the  good  and  the  evil  angel,  after  the  manner  of  the  old 

morality,  are  ever  at  hand  with  their  alternate  promptings: 

O  Faustus!     lay  that  damned  book  aside 

And  gaze  not  on  it  lest  it  tempt  thy  soul. 

And  heap  God's  heavy  wrath  upon  thy  head. 

Read,  read  the  Scriptures:   that  is  blasphemy. 

And  the  other  replies: 

Go  forward,  Faustus,  in  that  famous  art. 
Wherein  all  Nature's  treasure  is  contained: 
Be  thou  on  earth  as  Jove  is  in  the  sky. 
Lord  and  commander  of  these  elements. 

The  angels  disappear  and  Faustus  continues  in  soliloquy: 
How  am  I  glutted  with  conceit  of  this! 
Shall  I  make  spirits  fetch  me  what  I  please, 
Resolve  me  of  all  ambiguities, 
Perform  what  desperate  enterprise  I  will  ? 
I'll  have  them  fly  to  India  for  gold, 
Ransack  the  ocean  for  orient  pearl. 
And  search  all  corners  of  the  new-found  world 
For  pleasant  fruits  and  princely  delicates; 
I  'II  have  them  read  me  strange  philosophy 
And  tell  the  secrets  of  all  foreign  kings; 
I  '11  have  them  wall  all  Germany  with  brass, 
And  make  swift  Rhine  circle  fair  Wertenberg, 
I  '11  have  them  fill  the  public  schools  with  silk. 
Wherewith  the  students  shall  be  bravely  clad; 


OTHER  PLAYS  OF  MARLOWE  99 

I  'II  levy  soldiers  with  the  coin  they  bring, 
And  chase  the  Prince  of  Parma  from  our  land, 
And  reign  sole  king  of  all  the  provinces. 

In  The  Jeiu  of  Malta  Marlowe  found  a  less  universal 
theme,  but  constructively  he  produced  a  better  play.  It  is 
Marlowe's  misfortune  that  his  indignant  and  revengeful  Jew 
should  be  thrown  inevitably  into  contrast  with  Shylock. 
Barabas  is  the  incarnation  of  superhuman  revenge  (not  greed, 
for  that  is  secondary  to  him),  as  Tamburlaine  depicts  inor- 
dinate lust  of  empire,  and  Faustus  inordinate  lust  of  knowledge 
and  supernatural  power.  To  compare  Barabas,  therefore, 
to  Shylock,  who  remains  ever  human,  is  unfair,  for  the  very 
terms  of  Marlowe's  art  demand  a  different  scale  of  values. 
The  Jew  of  Malta  is  a  lurid  and  terrible  play:  but  it  must  have 
been  most  effective  on  the  stage.  To  upbraid  Marlowe  for 
following  the  popular  conception  of  his  day  as  to  the  race 
whose  badge  is  sufferance  is  as  preposterous  as  it  is  to  read 
into  Shakespeare  a  humanitarian  spirit  which  belonged  not 
to  his  time. 

The  last  of  the  unaided  plays  of  Marlowe  is  Edward  If, 
in  its  source  and  more  general  characteristics  a  chronicle 
history  like  much  that  had  gone  before;  but,  in  its  conception 
of  an  unkingly  king  in  struggle  with  his  surroundings,  in  the 
pity  and  the  terror  of  his  fall,  a  tragedy,  w^orthy  to  hold  place 
beside  Shakespeare.  The  advance  in  dramatic  construction 
of  Edward  II  over  Marlowe's  previous  plays  is  alone  enough 
to  set  at  rest,  once  and  for  all,  the  notion  that  Marlowe's 
genius  w^as  not  dramatic.  Almost  anything  might  have  been 
predicted  of  a  poet  who  at  less  than  thirty  had  compassed  the 
overwhelming  pathos  of  the  closing  scene  of  this  tragedy. 
But  Marlowe  was  dead  at  the  opening  of  the  year  1594,  leaving 
however  behind  him  a  repute,  foremost  among  the  poets  and 
dramatists  of  his  day,  and  affecting  subsequent  drama,  for  his 
images  of  dilation  and  heroic  resolve,  for  his  genuine  passion, 
power  over  the  phrase  and  poetry,  more  than  any  man  of  his 
time. 

Of  Dido,  Queen  of  Carthage,  in  which,  according  to  the 
quarto  of  1594,  Nash  assisted  Marlowe,  and  of  The  Massacre 


100  EARLIER  POPULAR  DRAMA 

at  Paris,  the  last  of  Marlowe's  works,  but  a  word  must  suffice. 
Dido  was  acted  (unlike  the  other  plays  of  Marlowe)  by  the 
Children  of  the  Chapel  and  may  have  been  written  early, 
though  the  blank-verse  is  mature.  The  whole  play  is  less 
vital  than  the  rest  of  Marlowe's  work.  The  Massacre  ex- 
hibits haste  in  composition  and  exists  only  in  a  corrupt  text. 
It  is  interesting  as  the  earliest  extant  play  to  lay  under  con- 
tribution the  annals  of  France  and  to  employ  them  in  much 
the  way  that  the  English  chronicles  were  to  be  so  largely  used 
by  Shakespeare  and  others. 

The  new  romantic  drama  that  sprang  into  being  in  the 
years  immediately  preceding  the  Armada  is  referable  above  all 
to  the  influence  and  example  of  Kyd  and  Marlowe,  the  former 
marking  the  steps  from  Seneca,  the  latter  showing  a  freer 
spirit  all  his  own.  Among  the  many  plays  inspired  by  their 
example  may  be  mentioned  Peele's  Battle  of  Alcazar,  Greene's 
Alphonsus  of  Aragon  and  Selimus,  if  the  latter  be  his,  the 
anonymous  ffars  of  Cyrus,  and  other  conqueror  plays,  as  they 
have  been  called  from  their  immediate  inspiration  in  Tam- 
hurlaine.  Of  more  general  though  no  less  certain  suggestion 
in  Kyd  and  Marlowe  are  the  several  plays  on  Titus  of  which 
we  hear  about  this  time,  the  only  one  surviving  being  Titus 
Andronicus,  variously  accredited  and  denied  to  Shakespeare. 
A  play  of  like  class  is  Lust's  Dominion,  written  at  latest  in 
1600,  but  published  for  the  first  time  long  after.  This  melo- 
dramatic production  reproduces  a  queen  of  the  extravagant 
lust  of  Tamora,  a  Moor  of  equal  wickedness  with  Aaron,  and 
otherwise  imitates  Titus  Andronicus.  Lust's  Dominion  has 
been  identified  with  The  Spanish  Moor's  Tragedy,  mentioned 
in  Henslowe  as  the  work  of  Dekker,  Haughton,  and  Day.  It 
is  certainly  not  Marlowe's. 

With  the  death  of  Marlowe  and  Kyd,  Elizabethan  drama 
was  well  launched  on  its  conquering  career:  for  it  had  gained 
by  this  time  not  only  dramatists  to  depict  life,  transfigured 
with  the  illumination  of  poetry,  but  it  had  found  as  well,  in 
men  like  Alleyn  and  Burbage,  actors  to  interpret  the  written 
word  on  the  stage.  Edward  Alleyn,  through  his  marriage 
with  the  daughter  of  Philip  Henslowe,  an  exploiter  of  plays  for 


ALLEYN  AND   BURBAGE  loi 

the  rivals  of  Shakespeare's  company,  acquired  the  financial 
support  necesssary  to  success  on  the  boards, and  became  notab'c 
in  tragedy,  especially  for  the  chief  roles  of  Man6we''s  plays. 
Alleyn  inherited  Henslowe's  wealth  and,  with  )no)ieV  gairiod 
by  his  own  talents,  retired,  like  Shakespeare  lale'i,  a  substan- 
tially rich  man.  Richard  Burbage's  career  was  not  dissimilar. 
His  father,  James  Burbage,  was  a  joiner  by  trade  and  became, 
through  this,  concerned  in  the  erection  of  the  Theater  in 
Shoreditch,  first  of  Elizabethan  playhouses.  The  interest  of 
the  family  in  the  stage  continued  through  three  generations, 
Richard  holding  large  shares  in  the  Theater,  the  Globe,  and 
Blackfriars  and  making  a  reputation  on  the  tragic  stage  that 
placed  him  at  the  head  of  his  profession.  Burbage's  asso- 
ciation throughout  his  life  was  with  the  company  to  which 
Shakespeare  was  attached;  and  it  was  he  who  created  the  most 
important  tragic  roles  of  the  great  dramatist.  A  lifelong 
friendship  existed  between  the  two,  and  of  late  their  names 
have  been  discovered  in  an  association  not  hitherto  suspected. 
It  appears  that  in  March,  1613,  the  steward  of  the  Earl  of 
Rutland  paid  Shakespeare  "forty-four  shillings  in  gold"  for  a 
design  of  an  ''impresa"  or  semi-heraldic  pictorial  badge  with  its 
attendant  motto,  and  an  equal  sum  to  Burbage  for  "painting" 
the  same  and  "making  it  in  gold."  The  invention  of  devices 
of  this  kind  was  a  fashionable  pursuit  of  scholarly  and  literary 
men  of  the  day,  and  we  hear  of  Sidney,  Daniel,  Camden,  Jon- 
son,  Donne,  and  Drummond,  all  as  variously  interested  in 
them.  The  connection  of  Shakespeare's  name  with  pictorial 
art  is  new,  but  in  no  wise  surprising.  As  to  Burbage,  there 
is  a  picture  of  him  in  Dulwich  College  which  purports  to  be 
the  work  of  his  own  brush.  The  notion  that  he  may  likewise 
have  painted,  in  1609,  the  portrait  of  Shakespeare  on  wood 
from  which  the  Droeshout  engraving  of  the  title-page  of  the 
first  folio  was  subsequently  copied,  must  be  pronounced  fanci- 
ful. Burbage  continued  on  the  boards  long  after  the  retire- 
ment of  Alleyn,  dying  in  1619,  three  years  after  the  death  of 
Shakespeare. 


.fS-o:.';-::    :  v.         chapter  vii 

THE    PAMPHLET    AND    THE    PROSE    OF    CON- 
TROVERSY 

COULD  you  or  I  have  had  the  good  fortune  to  have 
strolled  out  into  the  narrow  streets  of  Elizabethan  Lon- 
don, along  Cheapside,  past  the  Standard  v^^here  culprits  were 
displayed  in  the  stocks  or  the  pillory,  and  where  condemned 
books  were  burned  by  the  common  hangman;  into  Gracious 
Street  or  Bishopsgate  where  were  many  taverns  still  used  as 
cheaper  playhouses;  or  back  to  St.  Paul's  Churchyard  where 
the  scriveners  and  stationers  chiefly  congregated,  we  should 
have  been  struck  by  the  sight  on  all  sides  of  bright  and  con- 
spicuous signs,  marking  not  only  shops  with  their  wares 
displayed  on  booths,  but  private  houses  as  well.  Your  blue- 
coated  servant  might  be  a  very  intelligent  and  trustworthy 
fellow,  but  to  give  him  a  letter  for  delivery,  addressed  as  we 
address  letters  with  name,  street, and  number,  would  have  been 
to  nonplus  him  hopelessly.  Such  was  the  dilemma  of  Capulet's 
servant,  who,  given  a  written  list  of  persons  to  invite  to  his 
master's  feast,  was  compelled,  as  he  put  it,  "to  resort  to  the 
learned."  "To  my  very  dear  friend,  Antonio  at  the  Elephant 
in  the  south  suburb"  would  have  reached  Sebastian's  friend 
in  Twelfth  Night,  precisely  as  a  meeting  might  have  been 
arranged  between  two  bookish  friends  at  the  shop  of  Thomas 
Fisher  at  the  Sign  of  the  White  Hart  in  Fleet  Street,  seller  of 
J  Midsummer-Night's  Dream,  or  of  Thomas  Heyes  in  Paul's 
Churchyard  at  the  Sign  of  the  Green  Dragon,  for  whom  one 
of  the  quartos  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice  was  printed. 

It  is  improbable  that  three  out  of  ten  of  the  general  popu- 
lation of  the  London  of  Elizabeth  could  read  or  were  habitu- 
ated to  writing  more  than  their  names.  Shakespeare's  father 
aflixed  his  mark,  and  it  has  been  declared  that  the  art  of  read- 
ing and  writing  remained  a  mystery  to  Judith,  Shakespeare's 

102 


PAMPHLET  AND  NEWSPAPER  103  ^ 

daughter.  Be  these  bits  of  gossip  true  or  false,  it  is  plain  that 
the  age  attached  no  such  importance  to  what  Carlyle  calls 
"the  mystery  of  alphabetic  letters"  as  do  we.  Now,  we  know 
scarcely  any  education  save  that  which  comes  through  books, 
and  illiteracy  is  a  brand  and  a  stigma.  Such  was  not  Eliza- 
beth's age.  The  London  of  Shakespeare's  time  could  not 
have  numbered  a  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  souls,  and 
there  was  no  other  large  city  in  England.  With  a  reading 
public  thus  limited  in  numbers  and  by  illiteracy,  it  is  amaz- 
ing how  many  books  the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean  press 
put  forth.  What  proportion  of  the  population  of  a  modern 
British  or  American  city  would  buy  the  collected  edition  of 
a  popular  contemporary  playwright  at  say  twenty  or  twenty- 
five  dollars  a  volume  ?  That  was  about  the  comparative 
price  of  the  first  folio  of  Shakespeare  in  1623,  ^^^  year  of 
its  publication.  The  exhaustion  of  the  first  edition  of  this 
work  in  nine  years,  with  a  possible  ten  thousand  readers  in 
all  England,  means  little  less  than  the  twentieth  thousand  of 
some  cheap  passing  novel  of  to-day  with  the  possibility  of  fifty 
or  —  if  it  cross  seas  —  a  hundred  million  purchasers. 

It  is  often  affirmed  that  the  theater  of  Shakespeare  ab- 
sorbed to  itself  the  functions  of  the  newspaper,  including  those 
of  our  magazines,  reviews,  and  other  like  publications.  But 
the  theater  was  not  alone.  The  pamphlet  already  existed,  , 
and  the  pamphlet  and  the  broadside  were  the  forerunners  of  1 
the  modern  newspaper.  The  works  of  the  pamphleteers,  of 
Breton,  Rowlands,  Greene,  Nash,  Dekker,  and  many  others, 
are  often  among  the  rarest  of  books.  No  one  thought  of  pre- 
serving such  productions  any  more  than  we  think  of  treasuring 
old  newspapers;  and  they  were  read  as  thoughtlessly  and 
destroyed  as  carelessly  as  we  read  and  destroy  newspapers  to- 
day. The  Elizabethan  pamphlet  is  any  piece  of  ephemeral 
printing,  from  a  prognostication  of  the  weather  or  a  ballad 
turned  into  rime  because  of  some  recent  event,  to  a  tract  of 
political,  religious,  or  other  comment,  or  an  account  of  the 
queen's  last  progress.  Within  this  range  almost  every  con- 
ceivable variety  of  writing  is  possible:  anecdote,  from  the  jest- 
book  or  piece  of  rimed  doggerel  to  the  prose  tale  of  low  life  or 


104  THE   PROSE  OF  CONTROVERSY 

complete  romantic  story;  realistic  pictures  and  writings-up  of 
contemporary  rogues  and  vagabonds  or  exposures  of  the  tricks 
of  thieves  and  sharpers;  "characters,"  biographies,  travels, 
real  and  imaginary,  autobiographical  and  other  sketches. 
The  pamphlet  was  rarely  political,  for  there  were  pains  and 
penalties  attendant  upon  political  freedom  of  speech,  but  it 
vvas  often  on  matters  of  religious  controversy,  social  satire,  and 
personal  lampoon.  We  are  as  apt  to  forget  all  this  in  thinking 
of  the  great  age  of  Spenser  and  Shakespeare  as  we  are  apt  to 
forget  those  clogs  about  the  necks  of  our  own  culture,  the  com- 
moner newspapers,  the  commoner  books,  and  the  common 
thoughts  with  which  they  overlay  and  overwhelm  us.  Though 
just  as  now  there  are  able  men  who  give  their  best  talents  to 
our  own  daily  and  monthly  press,  so  in  the  old  time  an  occa- 
sional man,  capable  of  enduring  work,  bartered  his  talents  to 
the  needs  of  the  moment  and  rested  content  with  the  repute 
of  a  day. 

All  this  is  incipient  journalism,  only  requiring  a  keener 
interest  in  that  modern  acquired  need  of  our  daily  lives  which 
we  call  news,  the  organization  by  which  that  need  is  supplied, 
and  regular  publication  assured,  completely  to  parallel  the 
modern  newspaper.  Much  of  this  fleeting  literature  has  per- 
ished and  much  more  of  it  was  produced  by  anonymous  au- 
thors or  by  those  whose  names  are  now  practically  forgotten; 
and  yet  enough  remains  to  surprise  us  with  its  bulk  and  variety 
and  with  the  productiveness  of  some  of  those  who  contributed 
to  it.  Thus,  for  example,  an  enumeration  of  the  jest-books 
that  appeared  in  print  between  the  time  of  Shakespeare's  com- 
ing to  London  and  the  year  of  his  death  comprehends  a  dozen 
or  more  titles  in  which  the  names  of  Skelton,  Scoggin,and  Tarl- 
ton  recur.  Peele,  the  dramatist,  was  notorious  for  his  Merry 
Conceited  Jests,  collected  in  1 607;  and  Richard  Edwards,  in 
his  day,  and  Robert  Armin,  a  later  actor,  contributed  each 
his  share  to  a  variety  of  anecdote  which  neither  then  nor  now 
is  creditable  either  for  its  wit  or  its  decency.  Of  wholesomer 
nature  were  the  collections  of  popular  tales,  best  represented 
in  the  work  of  Thomas  Deloney,  variously  described  as  "a 
jig-monger"    or   "the    balleting   silk-weaver."     This   trades- 


I   UNIVERSITY  )J 

V     ^^      J 

^--^-^"^^"^  THE   PAMPHLETEERS  105 

man's  laureate,  as  he  has  hkewise  been  called,  was  the  author 
of  such  books  as  'Jack  of  Newbery,  Thomas  of  Reading,  and 
The  Gentle  Craft,  all  printed  in  the  nineties  and  concerned 
with  tradesmen  heroes.  It  was  from  the  last  of  these  pam- 
phlets that  Dekker  borrowed  the  plot  of  his  Shoemakers'  Holi- 
day, including  the  immortal  personage  Simon  Eyre;  and,  in 
a  second  story  of  the  same  book,  Rowley  found  the  story  of 
another  play,  his  Shoemaker  a  Gentleman.  As  to  the  fecundity 
of  some  of  these  pamphleteers,  it  may  be  noted  that  the  article 
on  Thomas  Churchyard,  in  The  Dictionary  of  National  Bi- 
ography, contains  over  fifty  titles  of  works  of  his;  Grosart's 
edition  of  Nicholas  Breton  prints  some  forty  tracts  in  verse 
and  prose,  all  of  this  general  class;  and  the  same  editor's  edi- 
tion of  the  prose  writings  of  Robert  Greene  fills  eleven  crown 
octavo  volumes.  Greene  and  Lodge  were  more  than  pam- 
phleteers; for,  aside  from  the  plays  of  the  former,  each  con- 
trived to  give  distinction  even  to  some  of  his  more  fugitive 
tracts.  Breton,  too,  concealed  in  much  rubbish  many  a  gem 
of  dainty  pastoral  verse  and  discloses  a  pervading  kindliness 
of  spirit  unusual  in  his  class.  While  Thomas  Nash,  despite 
the  rancor  of  his  personalities  and  the  passing  and  trivial  na- 
ture of  his  controversies,  must  always  be  reckoned  among  the 
masters  of  vigorous,  idiomatic  English  prose. 

Of  the  several  pamphleteers,  then,  that  it  is  here  possible 
to  notice,  Thomas  Churchyard  was  the  earliest.  An  older 
contemporary  of  Gascoigne,  born  in  1520,  but  living  on  to 
1604,  Churchyard  affected  the  broadside  in  verse  and  was  fond 
of  historical  and  quasi-historical  subjects.  His  best  known 
work  is  his  contribution  of  the  story  of  Jane  Shore  to  Bald- 
win's edition  of  The  Mirror  for  Magistrates,  1563;  but  he  like- 
wise told  the  vicissitudes  of  his  own  career  as  a  soldier  in 
Scotland,  Ireland,  and  on  the  continent,  describing  the  siege 
of  Leith,  "the  lamentable  and  pitiful  wars  in  Flanders,"  and 
the  "calamity  of  France,"  this  last  in  1579.  Somewhat  later  he 
wrote  several  tracts  on  the  projected  voyages  of  Sir  Humphrey 
Gilbert  and  Martin  Frobisher,  moralized  upon  the  late  earth- 
quake, described  the  queen's  progresses  into  the  country  to 
visit  her  nobles,  and  never  lost  an  opportunity  lugubriously 


io6  THE  PROSE  OF  CONTROVERSY 

to  celebrate  the  obsequies  of  statesman  or  notable  courtier. 
Churchyard  affected  the  letter  in  his  titles:  Churchyards 
Chipps,  Churchyard's  Choice,  Churchyard's  Chance,  Church- 
yard's Challenge.  His  Worthies  of  Wales,  1587,  is  accounted 
the  best  of  his  works;  their  journalistic  character  is  plain;  for 
few  events,  from  Sidney's  death  and  the  Babington  conspiracy 
to  Essex's  folly,  escaped  his  indefatigable  pen. 

Nicholas  Breton,  though  later  born,  was  even  longer  lived 
and  no  less  continuously  industrious.  Of  better  birth  and 
greater  refinement  than  Churchyard,  Breton  seems  to  have 
been  urged  to  a  literary  career  by  the  example  of  his  step- 
father, the  poet  Gascoigne,  who  left  him  a  love  of  learning 
although  he  dissipated  his  estate.  Breton  was  a  minor  satel- 
lite of  the  charmed  circle  of  the  Countess  of  Pembroke  to  whom 
he  dedicated  more  than  one  of  his  booklets;  and  his  literary 
work  extends  from  1577  quite  through  the  reign  of  King  James 
to  embrace  much  excellent  devotional  prose  and  poetry  and 
several  exquisite  pastoral  lyrics.  Considering  his  volumi- 
nousness,  Breton  maintains  a  remarkable  uniformity  of  style 
and  diction.  He  was,  moreover,  a  writer  of  unusual  versa- 
tility, writing  verse  and  prose,  satirical,  romantic,  religious, 
and  pastoral,  with  equal  ease  and  success,  and  with  a  charming 
and  equable  flow  of  good  spirits  —  cheerful,  fanciful,  and 
pathetic  at  will.  Wit's  Trenchamour,  1597,  in  its  interlocutors, 
an  angler  and  a  scholar,  and  the  talk  about  fish  and  fishing 
with  which  it  opens,  is  suggestive  of  its  famous  successor, 
Walton's  Complete  Angler:  but  the  dialogue  takes  a  different 
turn.  A  Discourse  between  a  Scholar  and  a  Soldier,  The  Praise 
of  Virtuous  Ladies,  An  Old  Man's  Lesson  and  a  Toung  Man's 
Love  are  sufficiently  described  in  their  titles.  Several  of  Bre- 
ton's pamphlets  are  satirical  and  three  of  these  in  verse  contain 
the  word  Pasquil  —  Pasquil's  Madcap,  Pasquil's  Fool's  Cap, 
Pasquil's  Pass  —  on  their  titles.  But  there  is  nothing  bitter 
in  Breton's  nature;  even  his  satire  is  full  of  humanity  and 
kindly  merriment,  and  the  just  and  modest  value  that  he  puts 
on  his  own  efforts,  calling  them  Toys  for  an  Idle  Head,  A  Post 
with  a  Packet  of  Madcap  Letters,  I  Pray  Tou  he  not  Angry, 


BRETON  AND  ROWLANDS  107 

Against  Murmurers  and  Murmuring,  disarms  anything  in  the 
nature  of  hostile  criticism. 

Among  Breton's  many  dialogues,  moral,  fanciful,  religious, 
and  other,  it  is  of  interest  to  find  several  in  form  of  short  essays 
imitating  the  manner  and  even  the  subjects  of  Bacon.  Fan- 
tastics  "discants  of  the  quarters,  months  and  hours  of  the  year 
with  other  matters";  but  Characters  upon  Essays,  Moral  and 
Divine,  1615,  not  only  deals  with  Baconian  abstractions,  such 
as  Honor,  Love,  War,  and  Resolution,  but  is  dedicated  in 
respectful  terms,  confessing  the  imitation,  to  "my  worthy, 
honored,  truly  learned  and  judicious  Knight,  Sir  Francis 
Bacon."  The  Good  and  the  Bad,  a  Description  of  the  Worthies 
and  Univorthies  of  this  Age,  1616,  partakes  more  of  the  variety 
of  writing,  recently  come  into  the  vogue  of  the  moment  in  the 
"character,"  of  which  more  below.  Lastly,  the  larger  class 
of  Breton's  devotional  tracts,  both  prose  and  verse,  exhibit  a 
simple-hearted  piety  and  kindly  charity  of  heart  which  further 
endear  this  engaging  old  writer  to  our  recollection. 

Of  less  literary  w^orth,  though  similar  in  his  career,  was 
Samuel  Rowlands,  whose  activity  lies  between  1598  and  1628 
and  who  died  two  years  later.  Rowlands'  productivity  almost 
equals  Breton's  and  includes  many  religious  tracts  and  satires 
of  such  asperity  that  some  of  the  author's  works  were  ordered 
to  be  publicly  burnt.  Rowlands  imitated  greater  men  in  a 
large  group  of  writings  on  the  low  life  of  London,  its  thieves, 
beggars,  and  "roaring  boys,"  as  they  were  called;  and  a  cer- 
tain ready-handed  ability  marks,  as  well  his  High  Way  to 
Mount  Calvary,  'Tis  Merry  when  Gossips  Meet,  as  his  Terrible 
Battle  between  the  Two  Consumers  of  all  the  Earth,  Time  and 
Death. 

The  greatest  of  the  early  pamphleteers  is  Robert  Greene, 
whose  place  among  the  predecessors  of  Shakespeare  has  already 
claimed  our  attention.  Greene's  earliest  prose  work  was 
written  under  the  direct  influence  of  Lyly  whose  style  he  imi- 
tated and  whose  long  disquisitions  on  the  nature  of  love  and 
the  processes  of  courtship  he  specially  emulated.  Greene's 
Mamillia  was  entered  as  early  as  1580  and  was  followed,  be- 


io8  THE   PROSE   OF  CONTROVERSY 

fore  the  end  of  the  decade,  by  more  than  a  dozen  other  love- 
pamphlets.  Mamillia  is  the  not  ineffective  story  of  a  fickle 
and  wavering  young  man,  Pharicles,  at  length  reclaimed  to 
virtue  and  to  matrimony  by  the  beautiful  and  steadfast  Mamil- 
lia. Among  the  others,  Euphues  his  Cetrsure  of  Philaiitus  is 
interesting  as  an  intended  continuance  of  Lyly's  famous  story; 
Perimedes  the  Blacksmith  contains  in  its  preface  much  valuable 
matter  by  way  of  allusion  to  the  contemporary  relations  of  the 
predecessors  of  Shakespeare;  and  Pandosto  is  memorable  for 
having  furnished  in  the  beautiful  tale  of  Dorastus  atid  Fawnia 
no  unworthy  original  of  The  Winter's  Tale.  Greene  is  often 
clever  in  the  manner  in  which  he  frames  or  introduces  his 
stories.  Thus  Planetomachia,  as  its  name  imports,  is  a  dispute 
amongst  the  planetary  gods  as  to  which  had  most  potently 
affected  the  doings  of  men,  and  stories  are  told  by  way  of  illus- 
tration. In  Penelope's  H'eb  that  dutiful  wife  discourses  with 
her  maidens  by  night,  of  love  and  adventure,  as  she  unweaves 
the  thread  that  she  has  spun  all  day;  in  Euphues'  Censure  the 
interlocutors  are  the  heroes  of  the  Trojan  war.  Some  of  these 
productions  are  mere  "dissertations  on  love  clothed  in  a  story." 
In  nearly  all,  Greene  holds  up  a  high  ideal  of  womanhood  and 
maintains  Lyly's  conception  of  "a  cleanly  story  fit  for  ladies 
to  read." 

With  the  threatened  arrival  of  the  Armada,  Greene  forsook 
love  themes  to  sound  the  note  of  war.  The  Spanish  Mas- 
querade is  a  book  of  the  moment  such  as  we  might  expect  from 
a  stanch  patriot  and  Protestant  in  a  time  of  national  peril. 
"In  the  attempted  invasion  of  the  Spaniards  he  saw  the  hand 
of  God  directed  towards  England  for  the  purpose  of  awaken- 
ing her  religious  enthusiasm;  in  Englishmen  he  saw  God's 
weapon  for  the  punishment  of  Spaniards  for  their  pride  and 
dishonesty."  This  production  is  only  historically  of  any 
interest. 

Greene  soon  returned  to  his  love  stories,  imitating  the 
Arcadia  in  Menaphon,  a  pastoral  of  great  beauty,  esteemed  by 
some  the  best  of  his  work,  and  assuming  a  deeper  and  more 
moral  tone  in  The  Mourning  Garment.  Nor  did  he  leave  be- 
hind him  a  more  charming  and  finished  story  than  Philotnela, 


PAMPHLETS   OF  GREENE  109 

which  was  written  in  the  year  preceding  his  death.  Greene 
began  now,  too,  to  levy  more  and  more  upon  his  own  adven- 
tures and  experiences,  and  to  dispute  more  deeply  on  vice  and 
passion,  as  in  his  Fareivell  to  Folly  and  in  the  two  touching 
books,  A  Groatsworth  of  fVit  Purchased  with  a  Million  of  Re- 
pentance and  Greeners  Repentance,  with  which  he  closed  his 
career.  There  remains  a  notable  class  of  Greene's  writings, 
the  series  which  deals  with  the  impostors  and  sharpers  with 
which  London  was  infested,  the  haunts  and  tricks  of  which 
Greene  knew  with  the  closest  personal  acquaintance.  Some 
half-dozen  pamphlets  of  various  lengths  on  cosenage  and  cony- 
catching  (the  old  words  used  to  designate  such  deceits),  belong 
to  the  years  1587  and  1592.  They  were  foUowings  of  a  type 
long  since  set,  of  which  more  below.  Greene's  handling  of 
such  topics  is  frank  and  realistic  but  never  prurient  or  unclean. 
His  words  are  marked  by  the  same  honest  outspokenness 
and  sincerity  which  characterized  all  his  utterances  concerning 
himself.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  truer,  a  more  whole- 
some story  of  a  fallen  and  reclaimed  womanhood  than  may  be 
read  at  the  conclusion  of  the  tract  called  by  the  cumbrous  title, 
A  Disputation  betiveen  a  He-Conycatcher  and  a  She-Cony- 
catcher;  precisely  as  it  would  be  impossible  to  find  a  more 
touching  story  than  the  autobiographical  account  which  Greene 
gives  us  in  his  Groatsworth  of  JFit  of  his  own  pathetic  and  un- 
timely death.  That  story  has  been  told  so  often  that  it  may 
here  be  passed  by  and  another  passage  preferred  which  almost 
equally  expresses  the  nature  of  these  autobiographical  pamph- 
lets. After  relating  the  careless  wickedness  of  his  life  at  the 
University  of  Cambridge  and  in  Italy,  his  pose  as  a  "mal- 
content," his  extravagance  in  attire,  Greene  proceeds  to  tell 
how  he  became  "an  author  of  plays  and  a  penner  of  love 
pamphlets,"  and  one  "young  yet  in  years  though  old  in  wicked- 
ness."    At  this  period,  he  continues: 

Yet  let  me  confess  a  truth,  that  even  once,  and  yet  but  once,  I 
felt  a  fear  and  horror  in  my  conscience;  and  then  the  terror  of  God's 
judgements  did  manifestly  teach  me  that  my  life  was  bad,  that  by 
sin  I  deserved  damnation,  and  that  such  was  the  greatness  of  my 
sin,  that  I  deserved  no  redemption.     And  this  inward  motion  I  re- 


no  THE   PROSE  OF  CONTROVERSY 

ceived  in  Saint  Andrew's  Church  in  the  City  of  Norwich,  at  a  lecture 
or  sermon  then  preached  by  a  godly  learned  man,  whose  doctrine, 
and  the  manner  of  whose  teaching,  I  liked  wonderful  well:  yea 
(in  my  conscience)  such  was  his  singleness  of  heart,  and  zeal  in  his 
doctrine,  that  he  might  have  converted  me,  the  most  monster  sinner 
of  the  world. 

At  this  sermon  the  terror  of  God's  judgements  did  manifestly 
teach  me  that  my  exercises  were  damnable,  and  that  I  should  be  wiped 
out  of  the  book  of  life,  if  I  did  not  speedily  repent  my  looseness  of 
life,  and  reform  my  misdemeanors. 

But  this  good  motion  lasted  not  long  in  me;  for  no  sooner  had  I 
met  with  my  copesmates,  but  seeing  me  in  such  a  solemn  humor, 
they  demanded  the  cause  of  my  sadness:  to  whom  when  I  had  dis- 
covered that  I  sorrowed  for  my  wickedness  of  life,  and  that  the 
preacher's  words  had  taken  a  deep  impression  on  my  conscience,  they 
fell  upon  me  in  jesting  manner,  calling  me  Puritan  and  precisian  and 
wished  I  might  have  a  pulpit,  with  such  other  scoffing  terms,  that 
by  their  foolish  persuasion  the  good  and  wholesome  lesson  I  had 
learned  went  quite  out  of  my  remembrance:  so  that  I  fell  again  with 
the  dog  to  my  old  vomit,  and  put  my  wicked  life  in  practice,  and  that 
so  thoroughly  as  ever  I  did  before. 

Is  it  always  necessary  that  we  should  remember  Robert 
Greene  as  the  man  who  first  maHgned  Shakespeare,  or  even 
as  the  poet  whose  ungoverned  life  and  repentant  spirit  has 
served  to  point  many  a  moral  and  adorn  many  a  tale  ?  Greene 
never  ceased  to  look  up.  He  never  failed  to  adore  the  sun  and 
the  pitiful  heavens,  although  his  feet  faltered  sadly  in  the  miry 
ways  of  the  world.  If  we  add  our  voices  to  the  chorus  of 
Shakespearean  praise,  may  we  not  save  a  tear  for  this,  his  fallen 
rival .'' 

Of  Thomas  Lodge  as  a  poet,  rare  lyrist  like  Greene  that 
he  was,  and  memorable  for  delicate  and  charming  Rosalynd, 
original  of  As  Tou  Like  It,  it  is  not  the  place  to  write  much- 
here.  As  to  his  prose,  in  his  Defense  of  Plays,  1579,  Lodge 
had  taken  a  part,  honorable  to  his  taste  and  learning,  in  the 
controversy  which  Stephen  Gosson  had  started  concerning 
the  wickedness  of  plays.  The  subsequent  pamphlets  of  Lodge 
include  a  variety  of  stories  and  discussions  more  or  less  Euphu- 
istic  or  couched  in  the  manner  of  Greene.     Lodge  was  a  far 


LODGE  AND  NASH  in 

traveler  and  wrote  one  story  while  at  sea  on  an  expedition 
against  the  Spaniards,  another  on  a  voyage  while  in  the  Straits 
of  Magellan,  entitled  A  Margarite  of  America,  published  in 
1596.  This  may  be  commended  to  those  who  think  that  the 
accident  of  geographical  position  should  determine  such  ques- 
tions, as  the  earliest  specimen  of  "American  literature,"  as  it 
preceded  Sandys  translation  of  Ovid  made  in  the  wilds  of  Vir- 
ginia by  some  twenty  years,  and  Mistress  Anne  Bradstreet, 
"the  tenth  Muse,  sprung  up  in  America,"  by  sixty  or  more. 

From  these  lighter  pamphlets,  the  fringe  of  fiction,  we  turn 
to  the  more  forbidding  prose  of  controversy.  In  one  of  the 
latest  of  his  pamphlets,  yf  Quip  for  an  Upstart  Courtier,  1592, 
Greene  had  incidentally  described  Gabriel  Harvey,  the  Cam- 
bridge don.  Mentor  of  Spenser  and  would-be  intimate  of  Sid- 
ney, as  "the  son  of  a  rope-maker  of  Saffron  Walden,"  which 
unquestionably  he  w-as.  Absurdly  touched  by  this  in  his 
family  pride,  Harvey  attacked  Greene  abusively  in  his  Four 
Letters  and  Certain  Sonnets,  and  it  is  even  said  visited  the 
obscure  lodgings  in  which  Greene  had  meanwhile  died  to 
collect  material  concerning  his  wretched  and  unhappy  end  to 
exult  over.  This  conduct  stung  Nash  to  reply,  not  so  much 
because  he  had  been  an  especial  intimate  of  Greene's  as  be- 
cause he  detested  Harvey's  conduct  and  recognized  in  him  an 
excellent  subject  for  his  own  satirical  quill.  Thomas  Nash 
was  born  in  1567,  a  minister's  son  of  Lowestoft.  He  left  Cam- 
bridge prematurely,  according  to  Harvey,  because  he  had 
played  "the  varlet  of  clubs  in  a  satirical  Latin  play  called  Ter- 
minus et  nan  Terminus."  The  literary  life  of  Nash  in  London 
began  about  the  year  1588,  and  his  first  work  was  apparently 
The  Anatomy  of  Absurdity.  Nash  was  influenced  in  this  work, 
as  were  others  temporarily,  by  the  fashionable  mannerism  o 
Lyly,  though  his  vigorous  prose  was  far  from  being  subdued 
by  Euphuistic  affectations.  In  the  Epistle  to  Greene's  Men- 
aphon  Nash  reviewed  contemporary  literature  with  the  vivacity 
and  contemptuousness  of  extreme  youth.  It  is  notable  though 
that  the  young  critic  attacks  the  abuses  of  the  style  of  his  day, 
especially  the  bombastic  style  of  Kyd  and  the  "Thrasonical 
huff-snuff,"  as  he  dubs  it,  of  such  translators  as  Phacr  and 


112  THE   PROSE  OF  CONTROVERSY 

Stanihurst,  while  he  lavishes  eloquent  words  of  praise  on  true 
poetry,  and  upholds  patriotically  the  credit  of  England.  To 
"our  English  Italians"  who  declare  that  "the  finest  wits  our 
climate  sends  forth  are  but  dry-brained  dolts  in  comparison 
of  other  countries,"  Nash  names  Chaucer,Lydgate,  and  Gower; 
and  he  adds:  "One  thing  I  am  sure  of,  that  each  of  these  three 
have  vaunted  their  meters  with  as  much  admiration  in  Eng- 
land as  ever  the  proudest  Ariosto  did  his  verse  in  Italian." 
And  then  he  continues: 

Should  the  challenge  of  deep  conceit  be  intruded  by  a  foreigner 
to  bring  our  English  wits  to  the  touchstone  of  art,  I  would  prefer 
divine  Master  Spenser,  the  miracle  of  wit,  to  bandy  line  for  line  for 
my  life  in  honor  of  England  against  Spain,  France,  Italy  and  all 
the  world.     Neither  is  he  the  only  swallow  in  our  summer. 

But  to  return  to  Nash's  controversy  with  Harvey,  it  was  in 
his  Wonderful  Astrological  Predictions  and  Strange  News  of 
the  Intercepting  of  Certain  Letters  that  Nash  assailed  Harvey 
in  1 59 1  and  1592.  Harvey  replied  in  Pierce's  Supererogation 
or  New  Praise  of  an  Old  Ass;  and  Nash  in  the  epistle  to  a  serious 
book  called  Christ's  Tears  over  Jerusalem  offered  honorable 
amends  and  reconciliation.  But  Harvey  was  not  made  of 
magnanimous  stuff  and  stood  in  suspicion  of  Nash's  offered 
hand,  which  Nash  accordingly  withdrew  with  dignity  in  a  new 
epistle  to  the  same  work.  So  things  rested  until  1596  when, 
having  heard  that  Harvey  had  boasted  that  he  had  silenced 
him,  Nash  put  forth  his  Have  with  you  to  Saffron  Walden,  or 
\J  Gabriel  Harvey's  Hunt  is  Up,  "containing  a  full  answer  to 
the  eldest  son  of  the  halter-maker."  "For  brain  power,  for 
prodigality  and  ebulliency  of  wild  wit,  for  splendid  fight," 
says  Grosart,  "for  ridicule  deepening  into  scorn,  scorn  rip- 
pling into  laughter,  for  overwhelming  absurdity  of  argument, 
and  for  biting,  scathing  words,  this  satiric  book  stands  alone 
in  the  literature  of  its  kind."  Nor  is  this  praise  excessive. 
Upon  the  publication  soon  after  of  a  weak  reply  by  Harvey 
entitled  The  Trimming  of  Thomas  Nash,  the  whole  thing  be- 
came a  stench  in  the  nostrils  of  the  public  and  it  was  ordered 
by  the  Bishop  of  London  "that  all  Nash's  books,  and  Dr. 


MARTIN  MARPRELATE  113 

Harvey's  books  be  taken  wheresoever  they  may  be  found,  and 
that  none  of  the  same  books  be  ever  printed  hereafter."  This 
meant,  after  the  quaint  custom  of  the  time,  a  pubhc  burning 
of  all  the  confiscated  copies  of  both  books,  a  ceremony  held 
at  the  Standard  in  Cheapside  and  superintended  —  at  least  at 
times  —  by  the  common  hangman. 

But  this  was  not  Nash's  only  literary  warfare.  Elizabeth's 
system  of  uniformity  in  religion  rested  on  compromise;  and 
the  growth  of  Calvinistic  ideas  among  the  Puritans  imperiled 
this  equilibrium  towards  the  end  of  her  reign.  The  Puritans 
made  episcopacy  the  especial  object  of  their  attacks  because 
the  institution  savored,  to  their  minds,  of  popery  and  upheld 
many  usages  under  the  Act  of  Uniformity  to  which  they  could 
not  in  conscience  subscribe.  The  bishops,  too,  had  other 
enemies  besides  the  Puritans.  Many  a  gentleman,  ruffling 
it  at  court,  recalled  that,  his  forefathers  had-fouaded  his  esate 
on  the  dismantling  of  monasteries;  and- would  have  been  little 
loath  to  repeat  a  like  spoliation  of  the  church.  ^Moreover,  the 
pride  and  ostentatious  wealth  of  some  of  the  bishops  must  have 
raised  the  question  among  the  poorer  brethern  of  their  own 
clergy  as  to  the  administration  of  Christian  offices  in  a  manner 
at  times  so  unchristian.  1  The  Martin  Marprelate  Controversy, 
as  it  was  called  from  the  pen-name  assumed  by  the  authors  of 
the  attacking  party,  arose  about  1588,  among  the  Puritans, 
out  of  these  considerations  and  especially  in  consequence  of 
the  immense  authority  which  the  union  of  church  and  state 
had  thrown  into  the  hands  of  the  bishops  of  the  Established 
Church.  The  Puritan  party  resented  what  amounted  to  the 
conversion  of  a  difference  in  religious  opinion  into  a  capital 
crime;  and  being  unable  to  reach  the  impersonal  power  resid-^ 
ing  in  the  high  commission,  appealed  in  print  from  the  crown 
to  the  people. 

For  the  control  of  political  and  religious  opposition  and 
criticism,  the  press  had  long  been  subjected  to  a  rigid  censor- 
ship, and  the  right  to  print  confined  to  a  designated  number 
of  printers  in  London  and  elsewhere.  In  1585  Archbishop 
Whitgift  took  a  new  step  against  the  liberty  of  printing  by 
obtaining  a  decree  of  the  Star  Chamber  which  restricted  the 


114  THE  PROSE  OF  CONTROVERSY 

right  to  print  to  London  and  the  two  universities.  By  this 
decree  the  number  of  printers  was  still  further  limited.  Only 
a  member  of  the  Stationers'  Company  could  maintain  a  press 
and,  on  misuse,  this  press  was  subject  to  instant  confiscation 
under  order  to  the  warden  of  the  company  from  the  Bishop 
of  London,  who,  with  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury  and  the 
official  licenser  alone  could  authorize  the  publication  of  any 
book.  \  None  the  less  the  Puritan  party  opened  their  press 
attack 'on  the  bishops,  in  1588,  with  a  violent  dialogue,  Dio- 
trephes,  written  by  John  Udall,  a  minister  of  Kingston,  who 
had  been  dispossessed  for  his  Calvinistic  leanings.  The  press 
of  the  printer  of  this  tract  was  broken  up  and  he  was  deprived 
of  his  license.  John  Penry,  a  Welshman  of  reforming  instincts, 
whose  tract.  The  Equity  of  an  Humble  Supplication,  had  been 
suppressed  in  the  previous  year,  now  took  Udall's  place  in  the 
van  of  the  Puritan  advance,  while  his  party,  nothing  daunted, 
continued  their  attacks,  v  Although  the  government  sought  to 
reach  their  masked  enemies,  tract  after  tract  issued  from  a 
press  moved  from  place  to  place  and  concealed  in  the  houses 
of  various  country  gentlemen.  \  Among  the  pamphlets  so  pub- 
lished were  Martin  Marprelatels  Epistle,  1 588,  leveled  against 
Dr.  Bridges  of  Salisbury,  Martins  Epitome  and  Hay  Any 
Work  for  Cooper  (both  in  the  next  year),  the  last  a  reply  to  a 
serious  Admonition  to  the  People  of  England  by  Thomas 
Cooper,  Bishop  of  Winchester.  At  last  the  government  suc- 
ceeded in  seizing  the  press  and  in  prosecuting,  under  torture, 
Barrow  and  Penry,  two  of  the  suspected  writers,  both  of  whom 
were  executed.  Udall  died  after  leaving  prison  in  1592.  This 
pamphlet  war  continued  well  into  1590;  but  it  gradually  died 
out  in  the  following  years. 

The  merits  of  this  dead  question  need  not  concern  us. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  violence  and  scurrility  of  both 
sides.  (  Who  Martin  Marprelate  really  was  has  never  been 
ascertained.  The  nom  de  guerre  probably  covered  the  writ- 
ings of  several  persons.^  Among  the  popular  defenders  of  the 
bishops,  on  the  other  hand,  both  Lyly  and  Nash  were  active. 
A  pamphlet  called  Pap  with  a  Hatchet,  1589,  has  been  con- 
fidently attributed  to  the  pen  of  the  former.     Nash  certainly 


MARPRELATE  TRACTS  115 

contributed  no  less  than  three  such  works  in  1589  and  1590: 
A  Countercuff  given  to  Martin  'Junior,  The  Return  of  Pasqml 
and  Pasquil's  Apology.  A  Mirj^r  for  Martinists,  Martin  s 
Month's  Mind,  and  An  Almond  for  a  Parrot  have  also  been 
assigned  by  some  to  Nash.  Both  Nash  and  Lyly  are  said  to 
have  ridiculed  the  Martinists  in  plays  on  the  stage.  The 
anonymous  reply,  Hay  Any  JVork  for  Cooper,  has  been  con- 
sidered the  best  of  the  Marprelate  tracts  themselves;  Lyly's 
Pap,  and  the  pamphlets  of  Nash,  the  ablest  of  the  replies.  \\It 
is  of  interest  to  note  that  Bacon,  safe  man  of  compromise  that 
he  was,  raised  his  voice  against  this  as  against  other  religious 
contentions  in  his  able  Controversies  in  the  Church,  1589. //Of 
the  style  of  these  papers  in  general  it  is  not  necessary  to  speak: 
they  range  through  all  the  degrees  of  satire  and  burlesque  to  a 
grossness  and  acridity  of  personal  invective  which  vras  in  keep- 
ing with  the  coarseness  of  the  times.  One  of  Nash's  editors 
condemns  his  author's  "fine  nose  for  the  carrion  of  anecdote," 
and  for  the  "terrorism"  and  literary  blackmail  of  his  malig- 
nant and  vehement  denunciation  of  the  Martinists.  In  vio- 
lence and  scurrility  Nash  little  surpassed  the  violence  of  mili- 
tant Puritanism.      / 

But  controversy  was  not  the  sum  total  of  Nash's  art  in 
prose.  His  Christ's  Tears  over  Jerusalem  is  a  serious  tract  in 
which,  under  the  guise  of  lamentation  over  the  fate  of  Jeru- 
salem, the  author  bewails  the  woes  and  shortcomings  of  his 
own  city  and  age.  In  the  social  and  satirical  pamphlets, 
Pierce  Penniless  and  Lenten  Stuff  or  the  Praise  of  Red  Herring, 
we  have  Nash's  more  characteristic  work.  Quaint  learning, 
a  keen  and  observant  eye,  much  knowledge  of  the  world  and 
its  ways,  an  exuberant  fund  of  humorous  anecdote,  a  clever 
power  to  give  a  witty  turn  to  thought  and  phrase,  and  a  copious 
command  of  the  language  of  encomium  and  especially  that 
of  vituperation:  all  these  things  are  characteristics  of  the 
remarkable  prose  of  Thomas  Nash. 

Lastly,  there  remains  by  Nash  one  piece  of  genuine  fiction. 
Jack  JVilton  or  the  Unfortunate  Traveler.  This  vigorous  bur- 
lesque and  melodramatic  story  has  the  distinction,  as  M. 
Jusserand  has  pointed  out,  of  being  the  earliest  picaresque 


ii6  THE   PROSE  OF  CONTROVERSY 

romance  in  the  English  language  and  the  only  production  of 
its  kind  in  its  age.  The  Unfortunate  Traveler  relates  the 
adventures  of  a  lively  stripling,  Jack  Wilton,  who  lives  success- 
fully by  his  w^its  in  various  parts  of  Europe.  He  begins  as  a 
page  with  tricks  upon  a  tapster  for  which  he  is  soundly  whipped 
as  he  deserves;  but,  rising  in  fortune,  becomes  servant  to  the 
Earl  of  Surrey,  elopes  with  an  Italian  lady,  and  actually  passes 
himself  off  for  the  earl.  It  is  worthy  of  remembrance  that 
the  adventures  of  Surrey  in  this  book,  like  Defoe's  Memoirs 
of  a  Cavalier  over  a  century  after,  were  taken  as  actual  facts 
by  later  writers  and  incorporated  in  sage  biographies.  Indeed 
Nash  shares  with  Defoe  that  delightful  art  of  "grave,  imper- 
turbable lying"  or,  to  put  it  less  opprobriously,  of  faithful  like- 
ness to  actuality  in  trifling  details  which  is  one  of  the  most 
precious  possessions  of  the  true  novelist.  It  is  impossible  not 
to  deplore  that  talents  such  as  those  of  Nash  —  his  power  of 
vision,  his  mastery  over  language, his  gaiety  of  spirit,  eloquence, 
and  rapid  ease  —  could  not  have  been  better  enlisted  than  in 
petty  ephemeral  pamphlet  warfare  and  in  the  exploitation  of 
passing  literary  fashions.  But  when  all  has  been  said  to  mark 
these  limitations  and  conditions  of  his  art,  Nash  must  remain 
conspicuous,  nay  unexampled,  in  the  annals  of  English  prose 
not  only  for  his  inexhaustible  Rabelaisian  humor,  his  merry 
malevolence,  and  for  his  confident  mastery  over  the  vocabulary 
of  Billingsgate,  but  likewise  for  his  power  over  the  telling  real- 
istic stroke  and  a  copious  flow  of  idiomatic  vigorous  English, 
alike  removed  from  the  alienisms  of  the  Latinists,  the  niceties 
and  affectations  of  the  Euphuist,  and  the  Arcadian  flower  of 
speech  and  ornament.  Here  is  part  of  a  humorous  description 
by  Nash  of  Harvey's  bulky  volume,  Pierce's  Supererogation: 

O  't  is  an  unconscionable  vast  gorbellied  volume,  bigger  bulked 
than  a  Dutch  hoy,  and  far  more  boisterous  and  cumbersome  than  a 
pair  of  Swisser's  omnipotent  galleas  breeches.  But  it  should  seem 
he  is  ashamed  of  the  incomprehensible  corpulency  thereof  himself, 
for  at  the  end  of  the  199th  page  he  begins  with  lOO  again,  to  make  it 
seem  little  (if  I  lie,  you  may  look  and  convince  me);  and  in  half  a 
quire  of  paper  besides  hath  left  the  pages  unfigured.  I  have  read 
that  the  giant  Abtaeus'  shield  asked  a  whole  elephant's  hide  to  cover 


PAMPHLETS   OF   DEKKER  117 

it,  bona  fide  I  utter  it,  scarce  a  whole  elephant's  hide  and  a  half  would 
serve  for  a  cover  to  this  Gogmagog,  Jewish  Talmud  of  absurdities. 
But  one  epistle  thereof,  to  John  Wolfe,  the  printer,  I  took 
and  weighed  in  an  ironmonger's  scales,  and  it  counterpoiseth  a  cade 
of  herring  and  three  Holland  cheeses.  You  may  believe  me  if  you 
will,  I  was  fain  to  lift  my  chamber  door  off  the  hinges,  only  to  let  it 
in,  it  was  so  fulsome  a  fat  bona-roba  and  terrible  Rounceval. 

Lastly  as  to  Elizabethan  pamphleteers,  we  turn  to  Thomas 
Dekker,  who  to  his  repute  as  the  follower  of  Greene  in  the 
drama  we  must  add  that  of  the  chief  successor  of  both  Greene 
and  Nash  in  the  pamphlet.  Of  the  life  of  Dekker  word  will 
be  found  elsewhere;  suffice  it  here  to  say  that  Dekker  was  a 
voluminous  writer  of  pamphlets,  upwards  of  a  score  being 
listed  and  accredited  to  his  authorship  between  1598  and  1637, 
the  year  of  his  death.  Nor  is  their  range  less  than  that  of 
previous  pamphleteers.  Thus  Canaan's  Calamity  and  The 
Four  Birds  of  Noah's  Ark  are  devotional,  respectively  in  verse 
and  prose.  The  JVonderfiil  Tear  is  a  vivid  picture  of  the  low 
life  of  London,  especially  of  London  lying  sick  with  the  plague, 
from  which  Defoe,  in  his  Journal  of  the  Plague,  disdained  not 
to  borrow.  The  Bachelor's  Banquet  is  a  free  adaptation  of  a 
well-known  French  tract,  Les  quinze  joyes  de  marriage,  while 
the  delightfully  satirical  Gulls'  Hornbook,  in  which  the  Jaco- 
bean gallant  is  anatomized  in  all  his  folly,  is  an  equally  free 
rewriting  of  Dedekind's  Grohianus.  Dekker  worked  once 
more  the  rich  vein  of  Greene's  conycatching  tracts  in  his 
Bellman  of  London  and  its  several  additions  and  amplifications, 
and  he  diversified  all  with  his  ready  wit,  his  fund  of  anecdote, 
and  the  occasional  play  of  a  poetical  spirit  which  we  must 
lament  to  find  thus  wasted  on  mere  production  of  copy.  Dek- 
ker's  pamphlets  are  an  invaluable  fund  of  information  on 
contemporary  social  manners  and  customs  and  have  yet  to 
offer  much  in  their  obscurer  parts  to  a  fuller  understanding 
of  the  greater  works  of  the  age.  For  example,  the  single  little 
chapter,  now  very  well  known,  in  The  Gulls'  Hornbook,  which 
tells  "how  a  gallant  should  behave  himself  at  a  playhouse," 
contains  a  mine  of  information  concerning  the  theater  of 
Shakespeare,  its  settings,  the  price  of  admission,  how  the  gal- 


ii8  THE  PROSE  OF  CONTROVERSY 

lants  abused  the  privileges  of  the  stage,  how  the  unfortunate 
playwright  and  actor  were  beholden  to  them  not  only  for  their 
patronage  but  for  permission  to  be  heard  at  all,  and  other  like 
matters. 

As  I  open  at  random  one  of  the  five  volumes  of  a  modern 
edition  of  Dekker's  prose,  I  find  an  account  of  the  poet's  visit 
to  the  Bear  Garden  on  the  Bankside  where  the  bear  set  upon 
by  dogs  puts  the  visitor  in  mind  of  "hell,  the  bear  .  .  .  like 
a  black  rugged  soul  that  was  damned  and  newly  committed 
to  the  infernal  churls,  the  dogs,  like  so  many  devils  in- 
flicting torments  upon  it."  And  much  pity  is  moved  in  the 
author's  humane  breast  when  "a  company  of  creatures  that 
had  the  shapes  of  men  and  the  faces  of  Christians 
took  the  office  of  beadles  upon  them  and  whipped  Monsieur 
Hunkes,"  the  famous  blind  bear,  with  long  sticks  till  the  blood 
ran  from  his  hairy  shoulders.  It  was  not  for  the  bear  that  the 
later  Puritans  condemned  the  royal  game  of  bear-baiting.  In 
another  place  we  read: 

Thus  sports  that  were  invented  for  honest  recreation,  are  by  the 
wicked  abusing  of  them,  turned  to  men's  confusion:  and  not  only  in 
these  games  before  rehearsed,  but  also  in  those  that  are  both  more 
laudable  and  more  lawful.  For  in  the  tennis  court,  cheating  hath  a 
hand;  yea,  and  in  shooting  (which  is  the  noblest  exercise  of  our 
English  nation),  arrows  do  now  and  then   fly  with   false   feathers. 

Could  anything  have  a  more  modern  ring .? 

But  the  pamphleteers  could  occasionally  rise  above  con- 
temporary conditions.  Many  are  the  passages  of  memorable 
eloquence  that  might  be  culled  from  their  works.  Here  is  a 
rhapsody  of  Nash  on  poets,  with  which  this  chapter  may  well 
conclude: 

Destiny  never  defames  herself  but  when  she  lets  an  excellent  poet 
die.  If  there  be  any  spark  of  Adam's  paradised  perfection  yet  em- 
bered  up  in  the  breasts  of  mortal  men,  certainly  God  hath  bestowed 
that,  his  perfectest  image,  on  poets.  None  can  come  so  near  to  God 
in  wit,  none  more  contemn  the  world.  Seldom  have  you  seen  any 
poet  possessed  with  avarice;  only  verses  he  loves,  nothing  else  he 
delights  in.     And  as  they  contemn  the  world,  so  contrarily  of  the 


THE   PAMPHLET  119 

mechanical  world  are  none  more  contemned.  Despised  they  are  of 
the  world  because  they  are  not  of  the  world.  Their  thoughts  are 
exalted  above  the  world  of  ignorance  and  all  earthly  conceits.  As 
sweet  angelical  choristers  they  are  continually  conversant  in  the 
heaven  of  arts.  Heaven  itself  is  but  the  highest  height  of  knowlege. 
He  that  knows  himself  and  all  things  else  knows  the  means  to  be 
happy.  Happy,  thrice  happy  are  they  whom  God  hath  doubled  his 
spirit  upon  and  given  a  double  soul  unto  to  be  poets. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
THE   PASTORAL  LYRIC  AND  THE  SONNET^ 

THE  age  of  Elizabeth  was  above  all  the  age  of  song. 
Music  then  flourished  as  a  diversion  and  accomplish- 
ment to  a  degree  which  has  not  been  known  since  in  England; 
and  that  form  of  poetry  which  is  nearest  to  music,  the  lyric, 
reached  a  height  as  memorable  for  its  variety  as  for  its  ex- 
traordinary excellence.  A  lyric  is  primarily  a  poem  that  sings, 
as  an  epic  is  primarily  a  poem  that  tells.  But  while  the  song- 
like quality  deserves  all  the  emphasis  which  it  has  received, 
the  modern  lyric  demands  an  equal  recognition  of  the  sub- 
jective or  personal  quality  which  characterizes  it.  The  lyric 
is  concerned  with  the  poet  and  with  the  interpretation  of  his 
thoughts,  sentiments,  and  emotions.  It  is  the  inward  world 
of  passion  and  feeling  that  is  here  celebrated,  as  opposed  to 
the  outward  world  of  sequence  in  time.  It  is  the  individual 
singer,  dignified  by  the  sincerity  and  potency  of  his  art,  that 
unfolds  his  own  moods  and  emotions  to  our  sympathy  and 
understanding,  not  a  mere  voice,  the  instrument  by  which 
we  are  introduced  to  the  protracted  wanderings  of  Ulysses 
or  the  heroic  deeds  of  Beowulf.  Several  corollaries  follow 
from  this  conception  of  the  dual  character  of  the  lyric.  It 
must  deal  with  passion  and  emotion  in  their  simplicity  as 
contrasted  with  the  drama  which  is  busied  with  both  in  their 
complexity.  The  lyric  must  be  emotion  clothed  in  beautiful 
and  musical  language;  it  must  be  free  from  the  intrusion  of 
mere  story  or  mere  description,  except  so  far  as  each  may  serve 
as  the  foundation  of  a  mood.  Above  all,  it  must  remain  free 
of  any  intent  to  teach,  argue,  or  explain;  for  its  address  is 
ultimately,  like  that  of  all  true  art,  an  address  to  the  feelings, 
to  the  emotions,  and  only  mediately  to  the  understanding. 
Inasmuch  as  the  lyric  demands  a  grasp  of  the  subtler  forms 

^  The  initial  paragraphs  of  this  chapter  are  based  on  the  author's 
Introduction  to  Elizabethan  Lyrics,  1895. 

120 


NATURE   OF  THE  LYRIC  121 

of  human  passion  and  emotion,  combined  with  a  consummate 
mastery  of  form  and  of  the  music  of  speech,  it  is  but  natural 
that  all  literatures  should  display  the  lyric  among  the  latest 
of  literary  growths.  Despite  what  must  be  admitted  as  to  an 
impersonal  lyrical  quality  inhering  in  much  early  popular 
poetry,  an  age,  in  which  the  gift  of  lyric  expression  is  widely 
diffused,  must  be  alike  removed  from  the  simplicity  and  imma- 
turity which  is  content  to  note  in  its  literature  the  direct 
effects  of  the  phenomena  of  the  outside  world  and  no  more, 
and  from  that  complexity  of  conditions  and  that  tendency  to 
intellectualize  emotion  which  characterize  a  time  like  our  own.  ^ 
In  an  age  lyrically  gifted,  we  may  look  for  innumerable  points 
of  contact  between  the  spirit  of  the  time  and  its  literature,  for 
the  most  beautiful  and  fervent  thoughts  couched  in  the  most 
beautiful  and  fervent  language;  in  such  an  age  we  may  expect 
the  nicest  adjustment  and  equilibrium  of  the  real  and  the 
ideal,  each  performing  its  legitimate  function  and  contributing 
in  due  proportion  to  the  perfect  realization  of  truth  in  its 
choicest  form,  beauty.  Such  an  age  was  that  of  the  Eliz- 
abethan lyric,  which  bloomed  with  a  flower-like  diversity  of 
form,  color,  and  fragrance  from  the  boyhood  of  Shakespeare 
far  into  the  century  that  knew  Milton  and  Dryden. 

The  origin  of  the  modern  lyric  of  art  in  the  poetry  of  Wyatt, 
Surrey,  and  their  followers  has  already  been  sufficiently  indi- 
cated. Tottel's  Miscellany  is  the  first  book  of  modern  English 
lyrical  poetry,  and  it  includes  what  the  following  generation 
regarded  as  the  best  of  the  lyrical  output  of  the  reign  of  Henry 
VIII.  Although  The  Paradise  of  Dainty  Devises,  published 
in  1576,  gathered  what  was  intervening,  and  although  the 
lyrics  of  Gascoigne,  Turberville,  and  some  few  others,  their 
contemporaries,  deserve  consideration,  the  outburst  of  the 
true  Elizabethan  lyric  scarcely  preceded  that  of  other  forms 
of  the  literature  of  the  century.  In  1575,  Spenser,  Greville, 
Lodge,  and  Greene  were  already  at  Cambridge,  whilst  Lyly, 
Peele,  and  Watson  remained  at  Oxford,  which  Sidney  had 
just  quitted  to  be  introduced  at  court  and  to  proceed  upon  his 
foreign  travels.  The  influences  that  made  these  men  poets 
were^hus  at  work  while  they  were  students  at  the  universities, 


122  THE  PASTORAL  LYRIC 

and  within  the  ten  years  that  followed  each  had  made  a  name 
for  himself  in  Hterature. 

The  Elizabethan  lyric,  with  all  its  variety  and  its  fre- 
quently high  poetic  attainment,  is  peculiarly  conventional 
and  imitative  of  precedent  and  example.  For  this  reason  we 
find  it  subject  to  a  succession  of  fashions  as  to  form  and  man- 
ner, following  now  the  dainty  unrealities  of  the  pastoral  mode, 
then  inclosed  within  the  formal  bounds  of  French  and  Italian 
sonnet  practice,  and  again  fashioning  its  winged  words  to 
be  set  to  music. 

From  1580  to  1590,  for  example,  it  was  the  custom  to 
express  lyrical  sentiment  for  the  most  part  in  the  terms  of  the 
pastoral.  The  world  became  a  glorified  sheep-walk,  its 
inhabitants  nymphs  and  shepherds  devoted  to  the  cult  and 
sway  of  love,  and  flitting  their  time  carelessly  away  in  dis- 
cussions of  the  divine  passion  combined  with  a  convention- 
alized appreciation  of  flowers  and  fine  weather.  The  pastoral 
mode,  to  be  sure,  was  by  no  means  confined,  in  England  or 
elsewhere,  to  the  lyric.  Originating  in  Italy  with  the  revival 
of  an  interest  in  ancient  poetry,  especially  the  Georgics  and 
Bucolics  of  Vergil,  the  pastoral  took  many  forms,  such  as  the 
eclogue,  pastoral  drama,  prose  romance,  and  lyric.  All  of 
these  spread  to  France  and  Spain,  and  later  reached  England 
in  as  great  a  variety  as  that  in  which  they  flourished  abroad. 
We  have  thus  the  eclogue,  illustrated  in  The  Shepherds' 
Calendar;  the  pastoral  romance  told  in  prose  in  Lodge's 
Rosalynd;  glorified  into  a  tale  of  valor  and  adventure  as  in  the 
Arcadia;  and  told  in  verse  and  allegorized  into  a  moral  scheme 
of  life  in  The  Faery  Queen.  Again,  there  is  the  pastoral 
drama,  which  came  for  the  most  part  later.  The  pastoral 
lyric  occurs  first  as  an  incidental  song  in  the  midst  of  the 
narrative  or  descriptive  eclogue  and  continues  in  this  use  in 
the  romance,  eclogue,  and  masque,  only  later  developing 
into  a  separate  poem  free  from  special  application.  Spenser 
was  the  first  English  pastoralist  to  include  songs  in  differing 
meters  within  the  dialogue  of  the  eclogue.  Such  are  the 
"Song  to  Eliza"  and  "The  Lament  for  Dido"  in  "April" 
and  "November"   respectively  of  The  Shepherds'   Calendar. 


THE  PASTORALISTS  123 

Similarly,  Sidney  inserted  many  lyrics  in  the  prose  of  his 
Arcadia.  Spenser  never  wrote  a  lyric  for  its  own  sake.  Nor 
did  Sidney  nor  Shakespeare,  very  often,  for  that  matter.  All 
Spenser's  lyrics  are  incidental,  like  the  two  songs  just  men- 
tioned, or  of  specific  application  like  the  larger  Prothalamion 
and  Epitlialamton,  and  even  the  Amoretti,  if  we  consider  that 
sequence  as  a  whole.  The  influence  that  separated  the  lyric 
from  its  place  in  the  eclogue,  romance,  or  drama  was  its  use 
as  the  words  for  music;  and  we  find  the  pastoral  tone  showing 
itself  in  the  first  madrigals  and  songs  intended  to  be  sung  andj 
in  the  anthologies,  such  as  England's  Helicon,  1599,  in  whichj 
occur  several  poems,  parted  from  their  context. 

Coming  thus  from  Italy,  where  it  had  been  cultivated  for 
two  or  three  generations,  the  pastoral  lyric  combined  with 
a  certain  fantasticality,  conventional  phraseology,  and  fond- 
ness for  conceit,  a  delightfully  childlike  abandonment  to  the 
senses,  a  joy  in  beauty,  light,  and  life  itself  which  disarms  the 
very  criticism  which  at  times  it  deserves.  Indeed,  the  average 
of  this  variety  of  lyric  is  not  nearlyso  high  aswe  might  suppose. 
The  lesser  poems  of  England's  Helicon  —  admirable  collec- 
tion though  it  be  at  large  —  the  volubility  of  Anthony  Mun- 
day,  the  long-spun  mediocrity  of  Nicholas  Yonge,  even  the 
fluent  but  somewhat  attenuated  strain  of  Breton  when  he  is 
not  quite  at  his  best,  all  go  to  attest  the  truth  of  this  assertion. 
But  if  we  turn  to  the  greater  men  that  practised  the  pastoral 
mode,  or  to  the  best  work  of  many  minor  poets  —  Sidney  and 
Spenser  aside,  to  Lodge,  Greene,  Peele,  Breton  at  his  best, 
Barnfield  and  Drayton  at  times,  even  Constable,  and  Marlowe 
assuredly  in  one  poem  —  we  find  the  pastoral  lyric  rising 
above  its  conventions  into  the  domain  of  the  finest  literature 
and  exhibiting  a  simplicity,  a  freedom  from  consciousness, 
a  happiness  in  metrical  effect,  an  engaging  sweetness  and 
tenderness  united  with  a  love  of  nature,  genuinely  and  artis- 
tically expressed. 

In  time  of  yore  when  shepherds  dwelt 

Upon  the  mountain  rocks, 
And  simple  people  never  felt 

The  pain  of  lovers'  mocks; 


124  THE   PASTORAL   LYRIC 

But  little  birds  would  carry  tales 

'Twixt  Susan  and  her  sweeting, 
And  all  the  dainty  nightingales 

Did  sing  at  lovers'  meeting: 
Then  might  you  see  what  looks  did  pass 

Where  shepherds  did  assemble, 
And  where  the  life  of  true  love  was 

When  hearts  could  not  dissemble. 

Then  yea  and  nay  was  thought  an  oath 

That  was  not  to  be  doubted, 
And  when  it  came  to  jaith  and  troth 

We  were  not  to  be  flouted. 
Then  did  they  talk  of  curds  and  cream, 

Of  butter,  cheese  and  milk; 
There  was  no  talk  of  sunny  beam 

Nor  of  the  golden  silk.  ' 

Then  for  a  gift  a  row  of  pins, 

A  purse,  a  pair  of  knives 
Was  all  the  way  that  love  begins; 

And  so  the  shepherd  wives. 

Thus  sings  that  sweet  pastoralist,  Nicholas  Breton.  Nor  is 
Robert  Greene  behind  M^ith  the  music  of  his  "Shepherd's 
Wife's  Song": 

Ah,  what  is  love  1     It  is  a  pretty  thing. 
As  sweet  unto  a  shepherd  as  a  king; 

And  sweeter  too: 
For  kings  have  cares  that  wait  upon  a  crown, 
And  cares  can  make  the  sweetest  love  to  frown. 

Ah  then,  ah  then. 
If  country  loves  such  sweet  desires  do  gain. 
What  lady  would  not  love  a  shepherd  swain  ? 

And  what  lover  of  old  poetry  ever  forgets  "that  smooth  song 
made  by  Kit  Marlowe,"  "Come  live  with  me  and  be  my 
love,"  so  beloved  of  Izaak  Walton;  or  Barnfield's 

As  it  fell  upon  a  day. 

In  the  merry  month  of  May, 

long  and  far  from  unreasonably  attributed  to  Shakespeare 
himself.''     The  pastoral  mode  continued  in  vogue  to  the  end 


FULKE  GREVILLE 


125 


of  Elizabeth's  reign  and  after;  but  in  the  following  decades 
it  declined  and  soon  ceased  to  be  the  dominant  lyrical  strain. 
i  But  if  this  decade  is  superficially  the  period  of  the  pastoral, 
there  is  in  its  poetry  a  deeper  undertone  not  only  in  the  artistic 
seriousness  of  Spenser,  but  in  the  sincerity  and  passion  of 
Sidney,  of  both  of  whom  enough  has  already  been  said.  In 
the  collection  known  as  Ccelica  which  embodies  the  lyrical 
poetry  of  Sidney's  friend,  Fulke  Greville,  there  is  a  new  and 
independent  spirit,  a  widening  of  the  sphere  of  the  lyric  theme 
to  include  non-erotic  sentiment,  and  an  all  but  complete 
abandonment  of  the  classic  imagery  and  allusion  which  long 
continued  elsewhere  to  be  one  of  the  chief  excrescences  of  the 
ornate  and  elaborated  style  of  the  time.  The  queen,  with  all 
the  poetry  of  adulation  that  was  lavished  on  her,  was  not 
often  addressed  in  terms  as  cabalistic  as  these: 

Cynthia,  because  your  horns  look  divers  ways. 

Now  darkened  to  the  east,  now  to  the  west, 
Then  at  full  glory  once  in  thirty  days. 

Sense  doth  believe  that  change  is  nature's  rest. 
Poor  earth,  that  dare  presume  to  judge  the  sky: 

Cynthia  is  ever  round,  and  never  varies; 
Shadows  and  distance  do  abuse  the  eye. 

And  in  abused  sense  truth  oft  miscarries: 
Yet  who  this  language  to  the  people  speaks, 

Opinion's  empire,  sense's  idol,  breaks. 

Some  of  the  later  lyrics  of  Greville  have  a  fullness  and 
intricacy  of  thought  and  a  disdain  for  prevalent  conventional 
poetical  mannerisms  that  would  do  credit  to  Donne  himself, 
who,  whether  influenced  by  a  possible  contact  with  the  poetry 
of  Greville  or  not,  was  at  least  of  a  kindred  cast  of  mind, 
^o,  too,  the  devotional  poetry  of  Robert  Southwell,  written 
mostly  in  the  years  immediately  following  1592,  shows  an 
independence  of  the  literary  influences  of  the  moment  (save 
for  the  one  matter  of  "conceit")  that  discloses  how  deeply 
that  faithful  priest  and  true  poet  was  immersed  in  the  mission 
that  brought  him  undeservedly  to  a  traitor's  scaffold.  South- 
well was  educated  at  Douay  and  took  up,  like  Parsons  and 
Campion,    the    dangerous    Jesuits'    mission    of   reconverting 


126  THE   PASTORAL   LYRIC 

England.  His  two  volumes,  St.  Peter's  Complaint  and  Mceon- 
ics,  appeared  in  1595,  the  year  of  his  execution.  Southwell 
deserved  the  high  repute  in  which  he  was  held  in  his  time  for 
his  fervor,  originality,  and  genuine  piety;  and  his  use  of  an 
older  fashioned  verse,  for  the  most  part,  than  that  of  his  immed- 
iate day  did  not  obscure  his  worth.  Even  Jonson  declared 
that  although  "Southwell  was  hanged,  yet  so  he  [himself] 
had  written  that  piece  of  his,  "The  Burning  Babe,"  he  would 
have  been  content  to  destroy  many  of  his  [own  poems]. " 
Different  in  almost  every  respect  from  Greville  and  South- 
well, to  whom  poetry  was  the  outlet  respectively  of  philosophic 
ponderings  and  devotional  yearning,  was  the  poetry  of  Thomas 
Watson  and  of  Barnabe  Barnes  who  continue  the  Italian 
impulses  given  to  English  poetry  by  Sidney  as  Greville  con- 
tinued Sidney's  strength  if  not  his  fervor  of  thought.  Wat- 
son's Hecatompathia  or  Passionate  Century  of  Love  was  pub- 
lished in  1582  and  was  thus  contemporary  with,  if  it  may  not 
have  preceded,  the  writing  of  Astrophel  and  Stella.  Watson 
was  a  Londoner;  he  studied  at  Oxford  and  appears  to  have 
died  a  young  man  about  1593.  He  is  frankness  itself  as  to 
his  inspiration,  ostentatiously  noting  many  of  his  sources 
among  Italian,  French,  and  classical  authors,  and  even  occa- 
sionally ridiculing  them.  In  1593  Watson  issued  a  second 
similar  collection  of  amorous  verse,  this  time  in  true  sonnet 
form,  which  he  called  Tears  of  Fancy  or  Love  Disdained, 
holding  much  the  same  attitude  and  pursuing  the  same  method. 
But  this  time  he  omitted  definite  mention  of  his  sources.  The 
interests  of  Watson  in  foreign  sources  extended  to  music  and, 
between  the  two  volumes  just  named,  he  published  i  book 
entitled  Italian  Madrigals  Englished,  1 590,  thus  taking  his 
place  (though  only  as  a  translator)  as  the  earliest  of  a  long 
line  of  lyrists  writing  words  for  music.  Barnabe  Barnes  was 
born  about  1569  and  died  in  1609.  Barnes  was  the  son  of 
a  bishop,  an  Oxford  man,  and  much  traveled  abroad.  As 
the  friend  of  Gabriel  Harvey  he  was  traduced  by  Nash.  An 
intimacy  seems  to  have  existed  between  Barnes  and  the  minor 
sonneteer,  William  Percy,  and  both  were  interested  in  the 
drama  as  well  as  in  lyrical  poetry.     Barnes    Parthenope  and 


THE  CONVENTIONAL  "CONCEIT"         127 

Parthenophil,  1593,  is  a  sequence  of  sonnets  interspersed  with 
canzons,  sestinas,  and  other  poems  of  Itahan  form  with  which 
he  seems  to  have  experimented  almost  as  fully  as  did  Sidney 
The  rediscovery  of  Watson  and  Barnes  within  recent  .times 
has  caused  critics  somewhat  to  overrate  their  facile  ability 
to  catch  the  general  Renaissance  spirit  in  its  lighter  moods, 
even  although  both  poets  justify  praise  by  occasionally  reaching 
high  levels. 

But  before  we  pass  on  to  a  consideration  of  the  sonnet, 
a  salient  mannerism  in  the  general  poetical  style  of  these 
earlier  poets  must  claim  our  attention.  In  Elizabethan 
English  the  word  "conceit"  meant  commonly  little  more 
than  idea,  thought,  or  conception.  It  came,  however,  soon 
to  involve  the  notion  of  witj,J[ancy,  and  ingenuity;  and,  as 
applied  to  literature  and  to  poetry  in  particular,  was  used  both 
of  the  thought  itself  and  of  the  rhetorical  device  by  means  of 
which  the  thought  was  expressed.  Gascoigne  thus  advises: 
"If  I  should  declare  my  pretence  in  love,  I  would  either  make 
a  strange  discourse  of  some  intolerable  passion  or  find  occasion 
to  plead  by  the  examples  of  some  history,  or  discover  my 
disquiet  in  shadows  per  allegoriam,  or  use  the  covertest 
means  that  I  could  to  avoid  the  uncomely  customs  of  common 
writers."  It  is  this  conscious  avoidance  of  "the  uncomely 
customs  of  common  writers"  that  begets  the  conceit  or,  other- 
wise expressed,  the  effort  on  the  part  of  the  poet  to  deck  out 
his  thought  in  striking,  apt,  and  original  figures  of  speech 
and  illustration.  It  is  obvious  that  such  an  effort  easily  degen- 
erates intojngenuity,  far-fetched  metaphor,  extravagance,  an"3 
^zaiit  of  taste;  for  all  these  things  came  m  tirne  to  characterize" 
the  conceTtto  such  airextenr^Hatthe^ongmariHea  was  losf;^ 
and  a  conceit  came  restrictedly  to  mean  ''an"y~conventiorial 
device  of  the  poet  —  fancy,  figure,  or  illustration  —  uSed  to 
give  individual,  transcendant  expression  to  the  thing  he  has 
to  say. "  The  conceit  was  not  the  invention  of  any  single 
English  poet;  nor  is  it  any  longer  held  that  Gongora,  or 
Marino,  or  any  other  foreign  poet  is  specifically  responsible 
for  it  in  English  literature;  though  it  certainly  developed 
under  the  influence  of  Petrarch  and  in  the  hands  of  his  followers 


128  THE  ELIZABETHAN  SONNET 

in  Italy,  France,  and  England  in  their  attempt  to  outdo  the 
hyperbole  of  their  master's  ingenious  imagery. 

As  already  intimated,  to  Sidney  belongs  the  doubtful  honor 
of  popularizing  the  conventional  conceit  in  England,  and  from 
his  sonnets  the  conceit  descended  to  his  heirs,  lawfully  and 
unlawfully  begotten,  the  sonneteers.  But  Sidney's  own  use 
of  the  conceit  was  not  confined  to  his  poetry.  True,  Stella's 
brow  is  alabaster  crowned  with  gold,  the  door  of  her  face  is 
red  porphyry  locked  with  pearl,  the  porches  (which  endure 
the  name  of  cheeks)  are  of  red  and  white  marble;  her  lover 
shares  her  heart  and  she  yields  him  her  frontiers;  her  eyes 
serve  him  with  shot,  her  lips  are  his  heralds,  her  skin  his 
armor,  her  flesh  his  food;  the  ink  as  he  uses  it  runs  to  Stella's 
name,  pain  moves  his  pen,  his  paper  is  pale  despair.  But 
in  the  prose  of  the  Arcadia  also,  Urania,  putting  her  foot  in 
a  boat  is  said  to  divide  her  heavenly  beauty  between  sea  and 
shore;  Philoclea's  hand  at  Zelmane's  lips  stands  like  a  hand 
in  a  book  pointed  to  noteworthy  words;  and  Pamela's  eyes 
dissolve  in  tears  and  leave  only  crimson  circles  behind.^ 
Outside  of  the  sonneteers  ■^—  of  whom  more  shortly  —  Father 
Southwell  elaborated  the  conceit  most  extravagantly  and  at 
times  absurdly.  Christ's  tears  are  pools  of  Heshbon,  baths 
of  grace  where  happy  spirits  dive,  turtle-doves  bathed  in 
virgin  milk,  and  half  a  dozen  other  things  as  strange.  He 
drinks  the  drops  of  the  heavenly  flood  and  bemires  his  Maker 
with  returning  mud;  Peter's  heart  was  not  thawed  by  the 
fire  before  which  he  sat,  its  hell-resembling  heat  did  freeze^^ 
it  the  more.  Drayton,  too,  though  comparatively  free  from 
the  conceit  in  his  sonnets  and  pastorals,  fell  into  the  fashion 
in  his  Heroical  Epistles,  a  work  naturally  pitched  in  a  high 
key,  though  he  later  gave  up  the  employment  of  such  devices. 

The  next  decade,  the  last  of  the  sixteenth  century,  is  the 
time  of  the  sonnet.  Introduced  into  the  language  by  Wyatt, 
first  practised  in  sequence  and  raised  to  the  standard  of  ex- 
quisite poetry  by  Sidney,  the  Elizabethan  sonnet  appears  to 

^  For  the  material  of  these  paragraphs  on  conceit  and  these 
illustrations  I  am  indebted  to  an  unpublished  paper  on  the  topic  by 
my  friend  and  colleague.  Professor  C.  G.  Child. 


y 


DANIEL  AND  CONSTABLE  129 

have  owed,  almost  from  the  first,  nearly  as  much  to  France 
as  to  Italy.  The  first  and  surreptitious  edition  of  Astrophel 
and  Stella,  uttered  by  Nash  in  1 591,  included  not  only  Sid- 
ney's sequence,  but  "sundry  other  rare  sonnets  of  divers 
noblemen  and  gentlemen,"  notably  twenty-eight  sonnets  of 
Samuel  Daniel.  Daniel,  an  Oxford  man  of  good  family, 
had  already  been  introduced  at  court  and  encouraged  by  the 
Countess  of  Pembroke.  Daniel's  inspiration  is  thus  directly 
traceable  to  Sidney.  At  the  time  of  this  publication  of  his 
sonnets,  Daniel  was  apparently  abroad,  as  he  appears  to 
have  acted  at  various  times  as  a  tutor  to  the  young  nobility. 
The  poet  resented  this  premature  publication  of  his  work,  and  J- 
in  the  following  year  put  forth  a  true  edition  of  his  Delia,  >* 
which  included  the  sonnets  already  published  together  with 
many  others  and  a  narrative  poem.  The  Complaint  of  Ros- 
amund. Daniel's  poetry  was  so  well  received  that  in  the  next 
year,  1594,  he  issued  another  edition,  called  Delia  and  Ros- 
amund Augmented.  Neither  of  these  poems  was  without 
its  effect  upon  the  non-dramatic  poetry  of  Shakespeare. 
And  indeed  Daniel  deserved  his  popularity;  for  versatility 
of  expression,  choiceness  and  polish  of  diction,  grace  and 
leisurely  dignity  of  style,  all  are  his;  though  no  one  could  be 
carried  away  by  his  fervor,  and  the  flowers  of  his  ornamenta- 
tion seem  artificial  at  times.  The  same  year  (1592)  brought 
forth  Diana:  the  Praises  of  his  Mistress  in  Certain  Sweet 
Sonnets  a  short  collection,  afterwards  enlarged  and  the  work 
of  Henry  Constable  who  is  described  as  "a  Roman  Catholic  ^ 
gentleman  who  lived  much  in  exile  by  reason  of  his  religion. " 
Constable  was  also  highly  esteemed  by  his  age  for  his  "pure, 
quick  and  high  delivery  of  conceit, "  and  he  practised  his  art 
with  a  clearer  understanding  of  the  technical  demands  of  the 
Petrarchan  sonnet  than  any  man  of  his  time. 

With  Daniel  and  Constable  .begin  clear  traces  of- the 
immediate  influences  of  the  French  sonneteers  on  those  of 
England.  Even  the  titles  of  these  two  series  are  suggestive 
of  their  borrowings,  the  one  from  a  series  of  dizains  by  Maurice 
Seve,  entitled  Delie,  the  other  from  Desportes*  Les  Amours  de 
Diane.     Michael  Drayton  too,  in  his  Ideas  Mirror,  Amours  in 


\\ 


w 


130  THE  ELIZABETHAN  SONNET 

Quartorzains,  1 594,  took  over  the  title,  Uldee,  from  a  collection 
of  sonnets  by  Claude  de  Pontoux,  1579,  and  is  otherwise 
indebted  to  the  French  poets.  But  the  chief  borrower  from 
France  in  the  sonnet,  as  in  his  other  lyrical  poetry,  is  Thomas 
Lodge  whose  Phillis  Honored  with  Pastoral  Sonnets,  a  pro- 
duction of  no  inconsiderable  poetical  merit,  was  printed  in 
1593.  Ronsard  and  Desportes  especially  were  pillaged  by 
Lodge;  Desportes  by  Constable  and  Drayton;  while  Barnabe 
Barnes  in  his  Divine  Century,  was  more  than  inspired  by 
Du  Bartas  and  Jacques  de  Billy.  But  the  Italians  and  the 
ancients  were  equal  quarries  for  these  free-booters  of  poetry. 
Aside  from  the  universal  imitation  of  Petrarch  and  his  school, 
even  Spenser  disdained  not  to  translate  Tasso  in  some  of  his 
Amoretti;  and,  to  the  scandal  and  employment  of  modern 
minute  scholarship,  he  neglected  to  make  note  of  his  borrow- 
ings. When  all  has  been  said  on  this  topic  a  protest  must  be 
raised,  as  it  is  not  fair  to  make  too  much  of  a  practice  that  was 
as  common  to  the  age  and,  in  general,  as  ingenuous  and  free 
from  concealment  as  piracy  on  the  high  seas  against  the  com- 
merce of  Spain.  We  have  seen  how  Watson,  in  his  Passionate 
Century  of  Love,  ostentatiously  noted  the  sources  of  most  of  his 
poems  and  even  the  details  of  his  treatment.  Watson  differed 
only  in  this  petty  pedantry  from  his  contemporaries  and  succes- 
sors in  this  art  of  lifting  gold  from  the  poetical  coffers  of  those 
who  have  had  the  impertinence  to  precede  us.  We  may  doubt 
whether  these  foreign  influences,  so  much  exploited  of  late, 
did  much  more  than  "facilitate  literary  effort  by  providing 
plenty  of  material  ready  at  hand,"  and  justify  Ben  Jonson's 
recognition,  among  the  "requisites"  of  a  poet  or  maker,  of 
imitatio,  or  the  power  "to  convert  the  substance  or  riches  of 
another  poet  to  his  own  use. " 

Sonneteering  now  became  the  fashion,  and  sequence  after 
sequence,  in  repeated  editions,  issued  from  the  press.  Drayton 
added  the  writing  of  sonnets  to  his  multiform  literary  activities. 
Watson  gave  over  Latin  poetry  and  converted  his  translations 
into  sonnet  form,  entitled  The  Tears  of  Fancy  or  Love  Dis- 
dained. Giles  Fletcher,  in  his  Licia,  turned  from  travel  and 
diplomacy;  the  author  of  Zepheria  and  Sir  John  Davies  from 


THE  STRUCTURE  OF  THE  SONNET   131 

the  law;  Spenser  from  epic  poetry  and  Shakespeare  from  the 
stage  to  sonneteering;  whilst  every  small  gentleman,  Percy, 
Lynche,  Griffin,  or  Smith,  in  his  Caelia,  Diella,  Fidessa,  or 
Chloris,  emulated  the  raptures  of  Sidney  and  the  finished 
similitudes  of  Petrarch  in  the  public  poetical  courtship  of  his 
real  or  imaginary  fair  beloved. 

The  Italian  form  of  the  sonnet,  as  is  well  known,  involved 
two  parts,  the  octave  and  the  sestette,  the  first  displaying  but 
two  rimes,  usually  inclusive  (that  is,  arranged  ah  h  a  ah  h  a), . 
the  sestette  frequently  three  (for  example,  c  d  e  c  d  e),  but 
variously  arranged.  There  are  many  theories  about  the 
Italian  sonnet;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  was  practised  even  among 
orthodox  Italian  poets  with  considerable  freedom.  Wyatt 
attempted  the  Italian  mode;  Surrey  frankly  An^l^yized  tfipr 
sonnet  by  converting  it  into  a  series  ot  three  alternately  riming 
quatrains,  each  with  new  rimes,  followed  and  concluded  with 
a  couplet.  And  the  majority  of  Elizabethan  sonneteers  —  with 
Sidney,  Constable,  and  Barnes  as  notable  exceptions  —  ac- 
cepted Surrey's  form.  This  form  {ah  ah,  c  d  c  d,  e  f  e  f,  g  g) 
has  been  immortalized  by  Shakespeare,  who  even  emphasized 
the  effect  of  the  final  couplet  by  bringing  the  sense  habitually 
to  a  pause  immediately  before  it.  It  would  not  be  difficult 
to  argue  that  in  substituting  English  habits  of  verse  —  such 
as  the  alternate  rime  {a  h  a  h)  for  the  inclusive  (a  h  h  a),  such 
as  the  final  couplet  for  the  avoidance  of  it,  and  a  variety  o£ 
rimes  for  the  Italian  paucity  —  the  form  practised  by  Shake- 
speare and  his  compeers  represents  a  truer  translation  of  the 
sonnet  into  English  than  a  closer  imitation  of  foreign  exotic 
conditions.  Opprobrious  names  belong,  assuredly,  to  no 
sincere  form  of  art.  Triumphant  usage  has  hallowed  the 
Shakespearean  form  of  the  sonnet. 

Elizabethan  sonnet  sequences  fall  naturally  into  certain 
well-defined  groups.  The  majority  are  devoted  to  the  celebra- 
tion of  the  passion  of  love:  some,  as  Sidney's,  Drayton's 
Idea,  Spenser's  Amoretti,  and  Shakespeare's,  suggesting  by 
means  of  successive  lyrical  moods  a  more  or  less  connected 
love  story,  on  greater  or  less  probable  basis  in  fact;  another 
class  dealing  with  the  praises  of  a  mistress  or  lamenting  her 


132  THE  ELIZABETHAN  SONNET 

hardness  of  heart,  as  Phyllis,  Cynthia,  and  Diana  or  Watson's 
Tears  of  Fancy.  Another  class  are  Httle  more  than  loosely 
connected  series  of  amatory  verse,  as  Willobie's  Aviso,  1594, 
J.  C.'s  Alalia,  1595,  Breton's  Arbor  of  Amorous  Devices,  1^97, 
or  Tofte's  Alba,  1598.  Still  others  are  collections  of  poems 
amatory  and  other,  as  Greville's  Ccelica,  having  nothing  in 
common  With  the  sonnet  except  a  certain  unity  of  thought  and 
brevity  of  form.  Two  interesting  short  series  of  sonnets 
disclose  a  healthy  revulsion  against  this  excess  of  sentiment 
and  sugared  similitude.  These  are  Chapman's  Coronet  for 
his  Mistress,  Philosophy,  1 594,  and  the  GullingSjanM^t*,,^ 
Sir  John  Davies  in  the  next  year.  The  first  appeals  to  a 
higher  insprrafion  than  that  vi^hich  animates  the  "Muses  that 
sing  Love's  sensual  empery, "  and  is  a  fine  and  elevated  con- 
tinued poem,  linked  sonnet  to  sonnet  by  the  repetition  of  the 
last  line  of  the  first  to  the  first  line  of  the  next  sonnet,  and  so 
on  after  the  manner  of  a  "coronet,"  The  sonnets  of  Sir 
John  Davies,  as  their  title  implies,  are  pure  "take-off"  on 
y^  the  absurdities  of  the  sonneteering  tribe  w^ho  v^ere  fair  game 
for  the  clever  courtier's  raillery. 

But  by  no  means  yyere  all  Elizabethan  sonnets  amatory. 
Second,    but   far   from   unimportant,  was   the  jevotional^  or 
retigTous  sonnet,^^ 
length. 


theniseivgs;  and  s'^metimes,  as^  m  the  case  of  Constable's 
Spiritual  SonneJslto  God  and  his  Saints,  in  their  day  unpub- 
lished, and  the  Divine  Century  of  Spiritual  Sonnets  of  Barnes, 
1595,  the  work  of  the  same  poets.  The  most  persistent  writer 
of  devotional  sonnets  of  his  age  was  Henry  Lok  (or  Locke) 
who  printed,  in  1597,  Sundry  Sonnets  of  Christian  Passions, 
"sundry"  here  equaling  one.  hundred  and  one.  A  previous 
hundred,  devoted  to  "meditation,  humiliation  and  prayer" 
merciful  Time  has  allowed  to  perish;  but  upwards  of  sixty 
more,  denominated  "a  few  to  divers,"  were  collected  by  the 
printer  and  reprinted  in  our  own  day.  As  to  Lok,  he  appears 
to  have  been  a  good  man,  practising  a  kind  of  piety  that  makes 
this  world  a  hideous  place  to  live  in.  As  to  inspiration  or 
the    slenderest    runnel    of  song,    he    has    absolutely   neither. 


"SPIRITUAL  SONNETS"  133 

To  have  been  born  such  a  man  as  Lok  in  the  age  of  Shake- 
speare was  the  very  quintessence  of  the  irony  of  fate.  But 
Lok  represents  a  dismal  fall  from  the  average  poetical  com- 
petency of  Elizabethan  devotional  sonneteering.  The  "spirit-- 
ual  sonnets  "__of  either  Constable  or  Barnes  could  furnish 
examples  comparable  at  least  with  the  average  level  of  either 
in  worldly  poetry;  while  the  two  short  series  of  Donne,  La 
Corona  and  his  Hol\  Sonnets,  both  of  questionable  date, 
contam  individual  ^oems^  wholly  of  Donne's  great  repute, 
as  tTiis  izmousSonnct  on  Death  wTirshowT 

Death,  be  not  proud,  though  some  have  called  thee    y^ 

Mighty  and  dreadful,  for  thou  art  not  so; 

For  those  whom  thou  think'st  thou  dost  overthrow  </ 

Die  not,  poor  Death;   nor  yet  canst  thou  kill  me. 

From  rest  and  sleep,  which  but  thy  picture  be. 

Much  pleasure,  than  from  thee  much  more  must  flow: 

And  soonest  our  best  men  with  thee  do  go. 

Rest  of  their  bones,  and  souls'  delivery. 

Thou  art  slave  to  Fate,  chance,  kings,  and  desperate  men. 

And  dost  with  poison,  war,  and  sickness  dwell, 

And  poppy  or  charms  can  make  us  sleep  as  well. 

And  better  than  thy  stroke;  why  swell'st  thou,  then  ? 

One  short  sleep  past,  we  wake  eternally. 

And  Death  shall  be  no  more;   Death,  thou  shalt  die. 

The  religious  sonnet  ran  into  hybrid  varieties  in  some 
cases,  as  in  Thomas  Roger's  Celestial  Elegies  in  Quartor- 
zains,  1 598,  a  mingling  of  the  sonnet  fashion  with  the  obituary 
poem,  so  dear  to  the  age,  in  the  old  edition  bordered  with 
black  ami  embalmed,  so  to  speak,  in  a  style  suggestive  of  the 
Senecan-funereal  manner  of  the  Mirror  for  Magistrates  or 
the  lugubrious  solemnity  of  Blair's  Grave.  In  1600  Breton 
used  the  sonnet  form  as  the  stanza  for  a  continuous  religious 
poem,  called  The  Soul's  Harmony,  and  the  second  part  of 
Davies  of  Hereford's  fFit's  Pilgrimage,  in  16 10,  is  cumber- 
ously  entitled  Soul-Passions,  "and  Other  Passages  Divine, 
Philosophical,  Moral,  Pietical  and  Political." 

A  third  use  to  which  the  Elizabethan  sonnet  was  put, 
was  that  of  the  occasional  poem,  most  frequently  in  obituary. 


1 


134        <       THE   ELIZABETHAN   SONNET 

dedicatory,  or  other  form  addressing  a  patron.  Roger's  Ce- 
lestial Elegies,  just  mentioned,  is  an  example  of  the  extended 
use  of  the  sonnet  for  the  first  purpose.  Four  sonnets  "to 
Sir  Philip  Sidney's  soul"  accompanied  the  first  edition  of  that 
poet's  Defense  of  Poesy,  1595.  It  was  the  fashion  to  prefix 
at  times  long  series  of  dedicatory  poems  to  important  works. 
Among  works,  so  introduced  by  sonnets,  may  be  mentioned 
The  Faery  Queen,  to  the  first  three  books  of  which  seventeen 
sonnets  were  prefixed  in  1590;  and  Gabriel  Harvey's  Four 
Letters  touching  Robert  Greene,  1592,  which  was  opened  with 
no  less  than  twenty-three.  Chapman's  Homer,  in  1 6 10,  sim- 
ilarly contains  fourteen  dedicatory  sonnets,  later  increased 
in  number.  Of  a  different  type  are  the  forty  adulatory  son- 
nets in  form  of  a  sequence  addressed  by  Joshua  Sylvester 
to  Henry  of  Navarre  "upon  the  late  miraculous  peace  in 
France,"  in  1597.  Although  not  sonnets  in  form,  of  similar 
adulatory  character  is  Astrcea,  a  series  of  octosyllabic  acrostics 
eulogizing  Queen  Elizabeth  which  Sir  John  Davies  devised 
in  1599.  In  this  Davies  followed  the  model  of  a  like  series, 
called  the  Partheniads,  by  George  Puttenham,  written  twenty 
years  earlier  but  now  lost  except  for  some  fragments. 

In  the  matter  of  conceit,  the  later  sonneteers  vied  with 
each  other  to  surpass  in  ingenuity  both  Sidney  and  his  master 
Petrarch;  and  in  the  main  they  succeeded.  Nor  is  it  to  be 
wondered  that  the  conceit  should  develop  most  readily  in  the 
sonnet,  where  intensity  of  feeling,  real  or  simulated,  was 
compressed  into  a  form  and  a  mode  of  expression  alike  con- 
ventional and  restricted.  Among  the  sonneteers  Daniel  and 
Drayton,  coming  early,  are  less  given  to  the  conceit  than  their 
successors.  From  the  excesses  of  the  conceit  Spenser's  good 
taste  largely  preserved  him;  while  Shakespeare,  though  by 
no  means  free  either  from  the  artificialities  or  even  the  triv- 
ialities of  the  sonneteering  tribe,  offers  very  few  examples  of 
•  *"the  elaborate  inventional  conceit,  as  it  has  been  called. 
It  IS  among  the  lesseFTTiFrr  that  vve  find  the  conceit  in  full 
blossom.  Thus  Constable  declares  that  the  basest  notes  of 
his  Diana's  voice  exceed  the  trebles  of  angels;  Giles  Fletcher 
bids  his  mistress  put  down  her  fan  from  before  her  face  and 


LESSER  SONNETEERS  135 

put  out  the  sun;  and  Tofte's  Laura  lays  her  handkercher  to 
dry  snow  white  on  quicksedge  wrought  with  lovely  eglantine. 
The  sun  is  slow,  so  she  casts  her  glance  upon  it  and  dries  the 
cloth,  but  burns  his  heart.  Lynche's  thoughts  reach  out 
beyond  our  planetary  system  to  conceive  of 

The  tallest  ship  that  cuts  the  angry  wave 
And  plows  the  seas  in  Saturn's  second  sun. 

The  anonymous  author  of  Zepheria  thus  rings  ingenious 
change  on  an  old  theme : 

Let  not  Disdain  (the  hearse  of  virgin  graces) 

The  counterpoison  of  unchastity, 

The  leaven  that  doth  sour  the  sweetest  faces, 

Stain  thy  new  purchased  immortality. 

'Mongst   Delian   nymphs,   in   angels'   university, 

Thou,  my  Zepheria,  liv'st  matriculated 

The  Daughters  of  ethereal  Jove,  thy  deity 

On  holy  hill  have  aye  perpetuated. 

O  then,  retire  thy  brows  artillery, 

Love  more,  and  more  bliss  yet,  shall  honor  thee. 

The  after-history  of  the  sonnet  is  not  long.  In  1604 
Sir  William  Alexander,  the  friend  of  Drummond,  published 
a  series  of  a  hundred  or  more  sonnets  under  the  title  o(  Aurora. 
The  collection  is  interspersed  with  a  few  songs  and  elegies, 
and  formally  inscribed  to  the  Countess  of  Argyle.  Alexander's 
poetry  is  decorous  and  graceful,  and  clearly  modeled  on 
French  examples.  The  sequence  was  probably  written 
within  the  period  of  the  sonnet.  The  sonnets  of  Drummond 
are  scattered  through  his  poems  and  belong,  like  the  few  of 
William  Browne  of  Tavistock,  to  the  first  decade  of  the  reign 
of  James.  Of  Davies  of  Hereford's  large  collection,  fFit's 
Pilgrimage,  1610,  devoted,  with  even-handed  justice,  half  to 
love  and  half  to  religion,  mention  has  already  been  made.  A 
few  rare  little  volumes,  not  strictly  of  sonnets,  but  protracting  the 
impetus  of  the  sonnet,  are  Daiphantus  or  the  Passions  of  Love, 
by  Anthony  Scoloker  and  Breton's  The  Passionate  Shepherd, 
both  in  1604;  Dolarnys  Primrose,  by  John  Reynolds,  1606;  and 
long  after,  George  Wither's  Fidelia,  161 7,  and  Fair  Virtue, 
the  Mistress  of  Phil' Arete,  1622.     It  is  altogether  likely  that 


136  THE   ELIZABETHAN  SONNET 

the  exquisite  love  poetry  of  these  last  two  works  of  Wither  was 
written  early  in  the  reign  of  King  James  and  before  Puritanism 
had  acidulated  the  nature  of  that  sweet  singer.  Daiphantus 
is  memorable  for  one  superlative  serious  poem,  entitled  "The 
Passionate  Man's  Pilgrimage,"  later  printed  as  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh's  among  his  Remains.  This  poem  is  tuned  to  the 
high  and  insolent  vein  which  his  contemporaries  ascribed  to 
the  Muse  of  Raleigh  and  deserves  a  place  beside  the  equally 
vigorous  indignation  of  his  most  popular  poem,  "The  Lie." 
A  tradition  that  "The  Passionate  Man's  Pilgrimage"  was 
written  by  Raleigh  in  the  Tower  in  expectation  of  the  imme- 
diate execution  that  threatened  him  in  1603,  adds  to  the 
poignancy  of  his  words.  The  poem  is  too  long  to  quote  here 
entire.     These  are  some  of  the  lines  of  it: 

Give  me  my  scallop-shell  of  quiet, 
My  staff  of  faith  to  walk  upon, 

My  scrip  of  joy,  immortal  diet, 
My  bottle  of  salvation, 

My  gown  of  glory,  hope's  true  gage; 

And  thus  I'll  take  my  pilgrimage. 

Blood  must  be  my  body's  balmer. 

No  other  balm  will  there  be  given; 
Whilst  my  soul,  like  quiet  palmer, 

Traveleth  towards  the  land  of  heaven; 
Over  the  silver  mountains, 
Where  spring  the  nectar  fountains: 
There  will  I  kiss 
The  bowl  of  bliss; 
And  drink  my  everlasting  fill 
Upon  every  milken  hill: 
My  soul  will  be  a-dry  before; 
But  after,  it  will  thirst  no  more. 

From  thence  to  heaven's  bribeless  hall, 

Where  no  corrupted  voices  brawl; 

No  conscience  molten  into  gold, 

No  forged  accuser  bought  or  sold. 

No  cause  deferred,  no  vain-spent  journey: 

For  there  Christ  is  the  King's  Attorney. 


DRAYTON'S  "IDEA"  137 

Be  thou  my  speaker,  taintless  pleader, 

Unblotted  lawyer,  true  proceeder! 

Thou  giv'st  salvation  even  for  alms; 

Not  with  a  bribed  lawyer's  palms. 

And  this  is  mine  eternal  plea 

To  him  that  made  heaven,  earth  and  sea, 

That,  since  my  flesh  must  die  so  soon, 

And  want  a  head  to  dine  next  noon, 

Just  at  the  stroke,  when  my  veins  start  and  spread. 

Set  on  my  soul  an  everlasting  head. 

Then  am  I  ready,  like  a  palmer  fit. 

To  tread  those  blest  paths  which  before  I  writ. 

To  return  to  the  sonnet  sequences  of  amatory  import, 
five  of  them  stand  out  distinct  in  poetical  merit  above  the 
rest:  these  are.  in  order  of  time,  Sidney's  Astrophel,  Daniel's 
Delia,  Drayton's  Idea,  the  Amoretti  of  Spenser,  and  the  Son- 
nets of  Shakespeare.  Of  the  first  two  enough  has  been  said 
in  this  book.  Michael  Drayton's  career  in  poetry  was  to  be 
a  long  and  honorable  one,  for  to  him,  as  to  the  other  poets 
just  mentioned,  sonneteering  was  but  the  passing  fashion 
of  the  moment.  In  the  longer  reaches  of  his  work,  Drayton 
is  a  Spenserian,  as  shown  in  his  love  of  allegory  and  the  pas- 
toral mode,  the  sweet  continuousness  of  his  measures,  his 
natural  felicity,  even  in  his  want  of  design  and  lengthy  elab- 
orateness. And.  for  all  these  things  in  time  Drayton's  pop- 
ularity came  to  equal  almost  that  of  his  master.  But  the 
earlier  sonnets  of  Drayton  preceded  both  Spenser  and  Shake- 
speare. Drayton's  sonnets,  judged  as  a  whole,  appear  to 
echo  successively  Daniel,  Sidney,  and  Shakespeare  Drayton's 
Idea  began  with  a  few  sonnets  among  several  pastorals,  pub- 
lished in  1593.  In  the  next  year,  the  sonnets  were  separated 
from  the  pastorals,  augmented  to  fifty-one,  and  called  Idea's 
Mirror,  Amours  in  Quartorzains.  With  his  sonnets,  as  with 
his  other  work,  Drayton  practised  constant  revision,  omission, 
and  addition,  so  that  by  the  definitive  edition  of  1619,  Idea  had 
come  to  contain  many  sonnets,  written  long  after  the  sonnet- 
craze,  while  other  earlier  ones  had  been  suppressed.  Indeed, 
one  sonnet  of  Drayton's  (the  one  beginning  "Since  there's 


1-8  THE  ELIZABETHAN  SONNET 


'J 


no  help,  come,  let  us  kiss  and  part")  which  impressionistic 
criticism  has  discovered  to  be  "so  fine  that  nobody  but  Shake- 
speare could  have  vi^ritten  it,"  appears  for  the  first  time  in 
this  edition  of  1619,  three  years  after  Shakespeare's  death. 
Drayton's  sonnets  in  general  have  less  of  grace  and  art  than 
those  of  Daniel;  at  times  they  are  even  somewhat  harsh. 
Despite  their  "originals,"  they  seem  less  Italianate  than  the 
earlier  sequences,  although  their  metrical  facility  and  ease 
are  prevailing,  and  two  or  three  will  maintain  their  place 
among  the  very  best  sonnets  of  their  time.  Many  parallels 
have  been  found  between  the  sonnets  of  Drayton  and  those 
of  Shakespeare,  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  prove  Drayton 
always  the  borrower.  The  majority  of  such  parallels,  how- 
ever, are  easily  referable  to  the  conventional  poetical  furniture 
of  the  time  with  which  it  was  imperative  that  every  well- 
turned  sonnet-sequence  be  equipped;  and  some  of  Drayton's 
sonnets  must  have  followed  Shakespeare's. 

Drayton's  Idea  purports  by  its  very  title  to  be  no  more 
than  an  objective  expression  of  the  poet's  ideal  of  womanhood. 
Yet  here,  as  elsewhere,  the  ingenuity  of  scholarship  has  dis- 
covered, or  thought  that  it  has  discovered,  references  of  sup- 
posedly autobiographical  import.  On  this  whole  topic  of 
the  subjective  significance  of  these  sonnet-sequences,  suffice 
it  to  say  that  it  is  as  easy  to  interpret  mere  lyrical  hyperbole 
into  a  chronique  scandaleuse  as  it  is  temporarily  to  etherialize 
real  human  passion  into  what  Bagehot  called,  in  a  different 
connection,  "evanescent  mists  of  lyrical  energy."  It  does 
not  seem  altogether  reasonable  to  deny  the  existence  of  an 
actual  person  inspiring  a  poet  to  become  a  sonneteer  simply 
because  he  may  have  translated  from  foreign  poets  and  bor- 
rowed the  conventional  ideas  of  his  time  as  to  courtship. 
Artificiality  does  not  always  equal  insincerity  and,  although  a 
poet  may  write  without  any  objective  undercurrent,  that  kind 
of  undercurrent  is  assuredly  not  so  rare,  as  the  world  goes, 
as  to  make  every  translator  and  imitator  a  pretender  in  affairs 
of  the  heart.  On  the  other  hand  it  is  impossible  not  to  sym- 
pathize with  the  frankness  of  the  preface  to  Giles  Fletcher's 


THE  "AMORETTI"  OF  SPENSER  139 

sonnets  to  Licia,  or  Poems  of  Love  "in  honor  of  the  admir- 
able and  singular  virtues  of  his  Lady,"  1593,  wherein  he 
writes : 

If  thou  muse  what  my  Licia  is  ?  Take  her  to  be  some  Diana, 
at  the  least  chaste;  or  some  Minerva:  no  Venus,  fairer  far*  It  may 
be  she  is  learning's  image,  or  some  heavenly  wonder:  which  the 
precisest  may  not  mislike.  Perhaps  under  that  name  I  have  shadowed 
[The  Holy]  Discipline.  It  may  be,  I  mean  that  kind  courtesy  which 
I  found  at  the  patroness  [Lady  Mollineux]  of  these  poems;  it  may  be 
some  college.  It  may  be  my  conceit  [i.e.  fancy]  and  pretend  nothing. 
Whatsoever  it  be;   if  thou  like  it,  take  it. 

The  y^morr/^/  o£_Spenser,  a  sequence  of  eighty-eight  son- 
nets, appeared  in  print  w-ith  Colin  Clout* s  Come  Home  Again 
and  the  Epithalamion  in  1595.  Spenser  published  no  other 
edition  of  his  sonnets  and  they  were  not  reprinted  until  the  col- 
lective edition  of  his  works  in  161 1.  The  Amoretti  must  have 
been  written  during  the  years  1592  to  i59^^^^aiEt4N: thus  they 
correspond  in  time  with  the  hei^foFnie  vogue  of  the  sonne 
It  was  in  June  of  the  latter  year  tlialf  Spensgi?"  fhafnea  Elizabe 
Boyle,  the  lady  indubitably  addressed  in  these  poems, 
critical  analysis  of  the  Amoretti  discloses  that  the  series  falls 
naturally  into  two  parts,  the  second  beginning  with  the  sixty- 
third  sonnet.  Up  to  that  point  the  sonnets  are  concerned 
with  Spenser's  courtsBTp'."  Tn  tKe  second  part,  the  lofty 
celebrafttfrTonove's  victory  is  the  poet's  theme.  It  is  char- 
acteristic of  Spenser  thus  to  have  continued  his  sequence. 
It  is  also  characteristic  of  him  not  to  have  stopped  at  the 
eighty-fifth  sonnet  which  is  the  real  conclusion  of  the  sequence, 
but  to  have  added  several  sonnets,  doubtless  written  at  other 
times.  Though  perhaps  in  this  we  are  wronging  Spenser,  as 
this  feature  of  an  irrelevant  gathering  in  of  sonnets,  not  related 
to  the  sequence  and  sometimes  not  even  by  the  author  of  it, 
is  a  familiar  feature  of  many  collections,  among  them  Shake- 
speare's, and  may  be  referable  to  the  printer. 

In  the  following  sonnet  there  is  less  of  the  conceit  and 


\ 


\l 


140  THE   ELIZABETHAN   SONNET 

convention  of  the  species  than  we  sometimes  find  even  in 
Spenser: 

More  than  most  fair,  full  of  the  living  fire 

Kindled  above  unto  the  Maker  near; 

No  eyes  but  joys,  in  which  all  powers  conspire 

That  to  the  world  naught  else  be  counted  dear; 

Through  your  bright  beams  doth  not  the  blinded  guest 

Shoot  out  his  darts  to  base  affections  wound; 

But  angels  come  to  lead  frail  minds  to  rest 

In  chaste  desires,  on  heavenly  beauty  bound. 

You  frame  my  thoughts,  and  fashion  me  within; 

You  stop  my  tongue,  and  teach  my  heart  to  speak; 

You  calm  the  storm  that  passion  did  begin, 

Strong  through  your  cause,  but  by  your  virtue  weak. 

Dark  is  the  world,  where  your  light  shined  never; 

Well  is  he  born  that  may  behold  you  ever. 

This  other  is  closer  to  the  spirit  of  Petrarch  as  interpreted  by 
his  imitators  of  the  later  Renaissance;  but  is  a  no  less  favorable 
specimen  of  Spenser's  sonneteering  art: 

Restore  thy  tresses  to  the  golden  ore. 
Yield  Cytherea's  son  those  arcs  of  love. 
Bequeath  the  heavens  the  stars  that  I  adore, 
And  to  the  orient  do  thy  pearls  remove. 
Yield  thy  hands*  pride  unto  the  ivory  white, 
To  Arabian  odors  give  thy  breathing  sweet, 
Restore  thy  blush  unto  Aurora  bright, 
To  Thetis  give  the  honor  of  thy  feet; 
Let  Venus  have  thy  graces  her  resigned. 
And  thy  sweet  voice  give  back  unto  the  spheres; 
But  yet  restore  thy  fierce  and  cruel  mind 
To  Hyrcan  tigers  and  to  ruthless  bears; 
Yield  to  the  marble  thy  hard  heart  again: 
So  shalt  thou  cease  to  plague,  and  I  to  pain. 

As  to  Spenser's  "own  marriage  hymn  of  thanksgiving"  the 
Epithalamion,  beautiful  if  robust  poem  that  it  is,  it  has  well 
been  said  that  had  Spenser  "been  silent,  he  would  have  felt 
that  he  wronged  Hymen  as  well  as  the  Muses."  It  was  in 
this   spirit  that  Spenser  wrote  the  Amoretti  which,   despite 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  HIS   PATRONS         141 

their  delicate  art  and  their  many  points  of  contact  with  ItaHan 
and  classical  poetry,  can  hardly  be  regarded  as  other  than  the  i  | 
genuine  outpourings  of  a  lofty  and  chivalric  nature  and  of  a  \j\ 
quality,  as  poetry,  second  to  the  best  of  the  sonnets  of  Sidney  |f 
and  Shakespeare  alone. 

Despite  some  recent  skepticism  and  scholarly  Platonic 
suspicions  we  may  reaffirm  with  confidence  that  Astrophtl 
and  Stella  had  its  inspiration  in  a  passion  sufficiently  real  to 
take  on  a  genuinely  tragic  tone  to  one  of  the  ardent  nature 
of  Sidney.  Spenser's  Amoretti,  too,  won  him  the  lady  of  his 
choice.  What,  then,  of  the  sonnets  of  Shakespeare  ?  Are 
they,  too,  based  on  experience  in  life  or  are  they  mere  literary 
exercises,  compounded  of  shreds  and  patches,  filched  from 
French  and  Italian  concettists  where  they  are  not  the  mere 
figments  of  an  imaginative  mind  ? 

The  life  of  Shakespeare  will  be  best  considered  with  his 
dramatic   work    later   in    this    book.     Whatever   the    precise 
time  of  Shakespeare's  coming  up  to  London  and  the  condi- 
tions of  his  earlier  life  there,  he  must  soon  have  learned  some- 
thing more  of  the  society  of  gentlemen  and  gentlewomen  than 
could  have  fallen  to  the  lot  of  one  who  saw  such  personages 
from  the  boards  of  the  theater  alone.     We  know  that  Shakes-  A 
peare  found  an  early  patron  in  the  young  Earl  of  Southampton;  [^ 
for  Shakespeare  dedicated  both  Venus  and  Adonis  and  Lucrece     \ 
to  him.     Recently  the  Earl  of  Rutland  (like  Southampton  an 
intimate  of  Essex  and  to  become  involved  with  him  in  his 
ruin)  has  been  discovered  to  have  been  also  a  patron  of  Shake- 
speare.   And  while   the   matter  is   not   susceptible  of  proof, 
there  is  surely  nothing  irrational  in  supposing  that  William 
Herbert,  Earl  of  Pembroke,  was  likewise  at  some  time  the 
poet's  patron,  the  more  especially  when  it  is  remembered  that 
Shakespeare's   fellow-actors,   Heming   and    Condell,  thought     \ 
,^mbroke)the  fit  person  with  his  brnther,  the  Earl  of  Mont- 
Cgornwyr^  whom  to  dedicate  the  folio  edition  of  the  diizm-^ 
atist's  works.    _^___„— -—       "'  '         "^        "" 

Shakespeare  was  imitative  in  his  earlier  work.  Titus 
Andronicus  has  already  been  mentioned  as  a  case  in  point. 
We  shall  see  soon  how  he  followed  the  lead  of  Lyly  in  comedy 


142  THE   ELIZABETHAN   SONNET 

and  learned  from  Marlowe  in  tragedy  and  chronicle  play. 
In  his  sonnets,  too.  Shakespeare  followed  the  fashion  j)f  his 
time.  And  although  they  were  first  printed  in  a  piratical 
edition,  as  late  as  1609,  there  is  every  reason  to  believe  that 
they  coincided  in  point  of  the  time  of  their  composition  with 
the  general  vogue  of  the  sonnet  and  were  well  known  by  cir- 
culation in  manuscript  "among  his  private  friends,"  at  least 
as  early  as  1598.  The  Sonnets,  like  all  other  subjects  connected 
;;••■  with  Shakespeare's  name,  bristle  with  difficulties,  though 
most  of  them  are  of  the  commentators'  own  making.  There 
is  question  about  their  dedication,  about  the  way  in  which 
they  came  to  be  published,  about  the  person  or  persons  to 
whom  they  may  have  been  addressed,  about  their  order,  their 
significance,  and  about  the  time  when  they  were  written.  As 
to  this  last,  opinion  has  just  been  expressed.  The  publication 
of  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  is  believed  by  some  to  have  been 
procured,  like  the  publication  of  many  other  Elizabethan 
books,  by  a  personage  who  may  be  best  described  as  a  pro- 
curer of  copy.  It  was  the  business  of  this  personage  to  obtain 
"for  publication  literary  works  which  had  been  widely  dis- 
seminated in  written  copies  and  had  thus  passed  beyond 
their  author's  control."  Nash  thus  procured  the  publication 
of  sonnets  of  Daniel,  as  we  have  seen  above,  much  to  that 
poet's  disgust;  and  an  earlier  striking  example  of  the  same 
thing  was  Gascoigne's  borrowing  of  the  manuscript  of  Sir 
Humphrey  Gilbert's  pamphlet,  called  A  Discourse  of  a  New 
Passage  to  Cataia,  and  publication  of  it  on  his  own  account. 
According  to  this  view,  the  "procurer  of  copy"  in  the  case 
of  Shakespeare's  Sonnets  was  an  humble  person.  A  clerk  or 
copyist, who  was  none  too  scrupulous,  might  have  opportunities 
of  acting  in  this  jackal  capacity  that  a  more  honest  man  would 
miss.     The  dedication  of  the  sonnets  to  "Mr.  W.   H. "   as 

'the  onelie  begetter"  is  then  regarded  as  referable  merely  to 
this  bookseller's  matter;  and  the  actual  name  of  "Mr.  W.  H. " 

—  whether  William  Hall,  Hart,  Hughes  or  anything  else  — 

becomes  a  matter  wholly  negligible.     The  greatest  difficulty 
which  this  theory  escapes  is  the  necessity  of  considering  "Mr. 

W.  H."  to  stand  for  "the  Right  Honorable  William,  Earl 


THE  "SONNETS"  OF  SHAKESPEARE        143 

of  Pembroke,  Lord  Chamberlain  to  His  Majesty,  one  of  the 
Privy  Council  and  Knight  of  the  most  noble  Order  of  the 
Garter."  So  to  have  misaddressed  a  peer  of  the  realm  might 
have  been  made  a  Star  Chamber  matter  in  Shakespeare's 
day.  There  still  continue,  however,  a  few  in  the  purlieus 
of  scholarship  who  insist  that  "Mr.  W.  H. "  is  intended  to 
indicate  the  Earl  of  Pembroke  and  that  he  was  alike  the  ded- 
icatee of  the  Sonnets  and  their  inspiring  subject.  That 
Shakespeare  should  have  made  no  effort  to  interfere  with  the 
printing  of  his  sonnets  need  excite  no  surprise.  This  whole 
matter  of  sonnet  writing  was  at  least  a  dozen  years  old  in 
1609;  and,  with  his  greatest  dramatic  work  behind  him  and  on 
the  point  of  retiring  from  the  stage,  Shakespeare  could  well 
afford  to  neglect  these  passages  of  his  youth. 

Some  other  questions  about  the  sonnets  are  not  so  readily 
disposed  of.  It  will  be  remembered  that  the  Sonnets  of 
Shakespeare  consist  of  two  series  the  first,  to  cxxvi,  "addressed 
to  a  young  man";  the  second,  from  cxxvii  to  clii,  "addressed  to 
or  referring  to  a  woman."  There  is  a  greater  connectedness 
in  the  first  series;  but  neither  are  arranged  in  consecutive 
order  and  even  this  general  division  is  not  wholly  justified 
in  every  case.  Moreover  not  a  few  of  the  sonnets,  especially 
towards  the  end,  seem  thrown  in  haphazard.  By  some, 
among  them  the  great  poet  Browning,  Shakespeare's  Son- 
nets have  been  thought  to  detail  matters  purely  imagi- 
native; by  others  to  be  dramatic  exercises  as  free  from 
autobiographical  allusions  as  the  plays  themselves,  though 
perhaps  written  to  serve  the  purpose  of  some  other  lover  than 
Shakespeare,  possibly  the  Earl  of  Southampton.  Again, 
several  writers,  mostly  German,  have  discovered  an  allegorical 
interpretation  for  the  sonnets,  making  the  "Mr.  W.  H." 
of  the  dedication  stand  for  "William  Himself"  and  finding 
nature,  romanticism,  Greek  art,  and  what  not,  after  the  man- 
ner of  the  second  part  of  Goethe's  Faust,  locked  up  in  the 
cabalistic  lines  of  the  poet.  As  the  young  man  is  fair  and 
the  lady  dark,  it  might  as  logically  be  suggested  that  we  have 
here  a  myth  of  the  sun  god  and  that  the  dark  lady  is  the  god- 
dess of  eclipse. 


144  THE   ELIZABETHAN  SONNET 

Without  going  into  refinements  and  combinations  of  inter- 
pretations, the  story  of  the  sonnets  is  neither  difficult  nor  in- 
volved; sonnet  cxliv,  published  by  Jaggard  in  The  Passionate 
Pilgrim,  in  1 599,  supplies  us  with  the  key. 

Two  loves  I  had  of  comfort  and  despair; 

Which  like  two  spirits  do  suggest  [tempt]  me  still  [ever]; 

The  better  angel  is  a  man  right  fair 

The  worser  spirit  a  woman,  colored  ill. 

The  poet  has  become  the  devoted  friend  of  a  youth  much 
younger  than  himself  and  of  a  station  in  life  above  him.  At 
much  the  same  time  he  yields  to  a  passionate  infatuation  for 
a  dark  lady  who  keeps  both  men  in  her  toils  to  their  undoing. 
The  first  group  of  sonnets  details  the  growth  and  fluctuations 
of  the  poet's  affection  for  his  friend  (which  in  the  parlance  of 
the  time  is  continually  called  love),  an  affection  which  has 
endured  three  years,  which  has  been  menaced  by  favors 
bestowed  upon  another  poet  (variously  identified  with  Daniel, 
Chapman,  or  Barnes),  and  by  the  circumstance  that,  in  his 
absence,  his  friend  has  sought  to  become  his  rival  in  the  favor 
of  his  mistress.  The  sequence  ebbs  and  flows  with  the  emo- 
tions of  the  poet,  now  exultingly  promising  immortality  to 
the  subject  of  his  praise,  at  other  moments  reproaching  him 
for  sensuality  or  for  patronage  bestowed  on  his  rivals,  des- 
pairing of  himself,  his  profession  as  actor,  and  of  the  age,  and 
longing  for  death;  again  returning  to  protestations  of  unfalter- 
ing love  and  constancy  in  friendship.  The  second  series 
deals  more  briefly  with  the  poet's  passion  for  his  mistress 
whose  "blackness"  —  to  use  the  Elizabethan  word  —  he 
extols  above  the  lily  fairness  of  other  men's  beloveds;  whom 
he  reproaches  for  her  unfaithfulness  and  for  the  wreck  which 
she  finally  makes  of  the  devotion  of  his  friend  as  well  as  of 
his  own. 

Without  returning  to  the  various  identifications,  if  the 
sonnets  be  of  autobiographical  import,  Southampton  is  the 
fairest  claimant  for  the  role  of  Shakespeare's  friend  and  pat- 
ron, as  he  is  known  to  have  been  both.  Some  still  prefer, 
however,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Earl  of  Pembroke.     There  are 


THE  "SONNETS'    OF  SHAKESPEARE        145 

difficulties  in  both  interpretations.  As  to  sirens,  the  court 
oP  Elizabeth  was  fuller  of  them  than  was  ever  the  iEgean; 
and  for  my  part  I  should  be  sorry  to  have  the  mask  of  anon- 
imity  torn  from  the  face  of  this  immortal  shadow. 

In  the  autobiographical  interpretation  of  the  sonnets  one 
thing  is  to  be  noted.  The  tale  is  a  tragedy;  and  it  could  only 
be  such  because  its  chief  actor  recognized  to  the  full  the  dis- 
tinction between  good  and  evil  and  shows  them  to  us  in  mortal 
struggle.  The  outcome  is  not  told  us;  that  evil  did  not  ulti- 
mately triumph  to  the  hopeless  corruption  of  that  great  spirit, 
we  have  the  true  and  noble  ethics  of  his  later  works  to  prove. 
Is  our  Shakespeare  less  that  he  was  tested  in  the  fier)'  furnace 
of  temptation  which  consumes  the  heart  of  man  like  chaff,  and 
came  forth  refined  and  chastened  from  the  ordeal .?  Must  we 
always  put  aside  our  charity  when  we  judge  the  great  ?  And 
is  that  which  is  imperishable  and  immortal  impaired  by  sharing 
that  mortality  which  is  ever  man's  whether  in  greater  or  less 
degree  ?  These  are  some  of  the  questions  which  we  should 
ask  ourselves  and  in  the  answers  which  we  can  give  to  them 
abide  content  with  what  we  have  before  us  and  not  seek  to 
explain  away  what  does  not  comport  with  our  own  precon- 
ceptions. 

As  a  sequence  the  Sonnets  of  Shakespeare  are  not  pleasing. 
The  story  is  not  attractive,  nor  the  uncontrol  with  which  it 
is  told.  It  produces  the  effect  of  a  vivid,  terrible,  and  confused 
dream;  its  very  beauties  seem  the  flowers  of  a  heated  and 
overwrought  imagination;  and  while  it  strikes  one  in  only  a 
few  of  its  interpolated  notes  as  unreal,  there  is  a  distortion 
about  it.  As  a  sequence  Astrophel  and  Stella  is  preferable; 
and  we  can  understand  why  Hallam  said  of  the  sonnets: 
"It  is  impossible  not  to  wish  that  Shakespeare  had  never 
written  them. "  But  if  we  come  to  the  consideration  of  in- 
dividual sonnets,  here  is  Shakespeare  preeminent.  Unequal 
as  the  sonnets  are,  considered  together,  —  some  of  them  on 
a  level  with  Lynche  or  Barnes  —  there  remains  a  collection, 
the  poetic  excellence,  the  masterly  touch  and  truth  of  which 
no  other  poetry  of  the  Elizabethan  age  can  approach.  More- 
over their  range  is  as  various  as  their  excellence  is  superlative, 


146  THE   ELIZABETHAN   SONNET 

now  trifling  with  words  or  punning  on  his  name,  now  play- 
fully satirical,  now  rising  to  the  impassioned  strains  of  ecstatic 
joy  and  confidence,  now  in  the  slough  of  despond  or  remorse 
and  fraught  with  that  deep  experience  in  life  which  makes 
Shakespeare  the  greatest  of  all  poets. 

When,  in  disgrace  with  fortune  and  men's  eyes, 

I  all  alone  beweep  my  outcast  state, 

And  trouble  deaf  heaven  with  my  bootless  cries, 

And  look  upon  myself  and  curse  my  fate. 

Wishing  me  like  to  one  more  rich  in  hope. 

Featured  like  him,  like  him  with  friends  possessed, 

Desiring  this  man's  art  and  that  man's  scope. 

With  what  I  most  enjoy  contented  least; 

Yet  in  these  thoughts  myself  almost  despising. 

Haply  I  think  on  thee,  and  then  my  state, 

Like  to  the  lark  at  break  of  day  arising 

From  sullen  earth,  sings  hymns  at  heaven's  gate; 

For  thy  sweet  love  remembered  such  wealth  brings 

That  then  I  scorn  to  change  my  state  with  kings. 

No  longer  mourn  for  me  when  I  am  dead 

Than  you  ^hall  hear  the  surly  sullen  bell 

Give  warning  to  the  world  that  I  am  fled 

From  this  vile  world,  with  vilest  jvorms  to  dwell; 

Nay,  if  you  read  this  line,  remember  not 

The  hand  that  writ  it;   for  I  love  you  so 

That  I  in  your  sweet  thought^  would  be  forgot. 

If  thinking  on  me  then  shbuld  make  you  woe. 

O,  if,  I  say,  you  look  upon  this  verse 

When  I  perhaps  compounded  am  with  clay. 

Do  not  so  much  as  my  poor  name  rehearse. 

But  let  your  love  even  with  my  life  decay, 

Lest  the  wise  world  should  look  upon  your  moan, 

And  mock  you  with  me  after  I  am  gone. 

The  fervor,  the  music,  the  distinction  of  these  lines,  may  be 
equaled,  though  not  surpassed,  again  and  again  among  these 
exquisite  lyrics.  Can  poems  such  as  these  be  conceived  as 
mere  literary  exercises,  inspired  in  the  passing  fashion  of  the 
moment  and  bearing  no  freight  of  an  actual  experience  in  life  ? 
And  yet  could  not  the  mind  that  fashioned,  as  from  within^. 


THE  "SONNETS"  OF  SHAKESPEARE        147 

alike  the  doubts  and  questionings  of  Hamlet  and  the  unimagi- 
native certainties  of  Henry  V,  the  wicked  egotism  of  lago,  and 
the  benign  magnanimity  of  Prosper©,  —  and  this  though  he 
was  neither  Prospero,  lago,  Henry,  nor  yet  Hamlet, —  could 
not  this  man  have  written  even  these  sonnets  without  once  let- 
ting us  into  the  veritable  secrets  of  his  great  and  mysterious 
soul?  The  question  is  insoluble;  and  it  is  better  so.  It  is 
well  that  there  should  still  remain  some  mysteries  which 
the  prying  scrutiny  of  research  must  leave  among  the 
riddles  of  time. 


CHAPTER  IX 

SHAKESPEARE    IN    COMEDY    AND    IN 
CHRONICLE   HISTORY 

IN  two  of  the  preceding  chapters  of  this  book  the  earlier 
history  of  the  drama  in  Elizabeth's  reign  has  been  traced, 
first  with  Lyly  at  court  and  then  with  Marlowe  and  his  fellows 
on  the  popular  stage  of  London.  We  turn  now  to  the  often 
told  story  of  Shakespeare,  especially  in  what  we  may  reason- 
ably reconstruct  concerning  the  earlier  half  of  his  life  and 
career  as  a  dramatist. 

It  is  a  commonplace  of  literary  biography  that  the  mate- 
rials out  of  which  to  construct  a  life  of  Shakespeare  are  exceed- 
ingly scant;  scantier,  it  is  sometimes  added,  than  similar 
data  concerning  other  men,  his  associates  and  contempo- 
raries. The  statement  is  not  borne  out  by  the  facts.  The 
material  as  to  Shakespeare's  life,  even  unembellished,  is  not 
inconsiderable;  and  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  the  sub- 
ject closed.  There  are,  for  example,  some  one  hundred  and 
seventy-five  separate  and  individual  evidences  of  Shake- 
speare's private  life  in  the  shape  of  official  records,  documents, 
entries,  notices,  and  allusions,  all  of  them  contemporary. 
Most  of  these,  as  might  be  expected,  have  reference  to  his 
dramatic  and  poetic  works,  but  twenty  documents  which 
concern  his  life  and  contain  his  name  might  be  cited  in  any 
court  of  record  to-day  for  the  facts  that  they  witness.  Of  the 
total  twenty-six  relate  to  births,  marriages,  and  deaths;  and 
five  are  evidences  of  ownership  in  the  precinct  of  Blackfriars. 
The  rest  concern  suits  at  law,  and  include  a  tax  assessment 
when  Shakespeare  lived  in  the  neighborhood  of  Bishopsgate, 
(though  this  has  of  late  been  questioned),  certain  deeds 
and  mortgages,  and  his  will.  Most  recently  of  all,  we  hear 
of  Shakespeare  as  a  witness  in  a  lawsuit  among  the  papers 
of  which  turns  up  a  deposition,  signed  by  his  own  hand,  add- 

148 


THE   LIFE   OF  SHAKESPEARE  149 

ing  a  sixth  to  the  slender  total  of  his  other  five  signatures. 
According  to  this,  Shakespeare  lived,  from  1598  to  1604,  as  a 
"sojourner"  or  sub-tenant  in  the  house  of  one  Christopher 
Mountjoy,  a  French  Huguenot  and  prosperous  tiremaker, 
at  the  corner  of  Silver  and  Monkwell  Streets,  in  the  parish 
of  St.  Olave,  not  far  from  Cripplegate.*  All  this  is  a  slenderer 
show  of  materials  than  that  which  we  can  scrape  together  con- 
cerning several  of  his  contemporaries,  statesmen,  noblemen,  and 
men  of  public  service.  We  do  not  know  as  much  about  Shake- 
speare, for  example,  as  we  know  about  Sidney,  Raleigh,  Bur- 
leigh, or  even  Ben  Jonson,  who  was  much  in  the  employ  of  the 
court;  but  we  know  far  more  of  Shakespeare  than  we  can 
glean  of  Marlowe,  Webster,  or  Fletcher.  In  fact  we  know  more 
of  Shakespeare  than  we  know  of  any  other  man  of  his  time 
similarly  circumstanced;  and  this  is  due  not  only  to  the  indus- 
trious researches  of  the  scholars  and  editors  of  three  centuries, 
but  to  the  indisputable  fact  that  Shakespeare  was  interesting 
to  his  own  age. 

The  recorded  facts  of  Shakespeare's  life  are  familiar  to  all; 
how  he  was  baptized  April  26,  1564,  at  Stratford,  the  son  of  a 
yeoman,  John  Shakespeare,  and  Mary,  his  wife;  how  he 
entered  into  a  bond  when  scarcely  nineteen  to  marry  Ann 
Hathaway  who  was  nine  years  his  senior;  how  Susanna,  their 
daughter,  was  born  so  soon  as  to  explain  the  necessity  of  the 
irregularity  of  but  once  asking  the  bans;  and  how  other 
children  followed  to  increase  the  responsibilities  of  a  husband 
not  yet  of  age.  There  is  record  of  young  Shakespeare's  con- 
sent in  1587  to  the  mortgage  of  property  of  his  mother's  at 
Ashby;  and  the  scene  then  changes  from  Stratford  to  London. 
In  1592  comes  Greene's  allusion,  in  the  Groatsworth  of  fFit, 
enviously  attesting  Shakespeare's  success  as  a  playwright, 
with  Chettle's  recognition,  in  his  Kind-Heart's  Dream,  of 
Shakespeare's  standing  as  a  man  and  an  actor;  the  dedications 
of  Venus  and  Adonis  and  oi  Lucrece  to  the  Earl  of  Southamp- 
ton follow  in  the  next  two  years.  And  now  begin  the  entries 
of  the    Stationers'  Register,  first   of  plays,   some   doubtfully 

*  See  C.  W.  Wallace,  New  Shakespeare  Discoveries,  Harper's 
Magazine.  March,  1910. 


150  SHAKESPEARE   IN  COMEDY 

Shakespeare's  and  as  yet  without  his  name.  Later  his  name 
appears  with  the  titles,  and  popular  plays  run  into  six  and 
seven  editions  during  his  lifetime,  while  piratical  printers  not 
only  publish  works  that  are  Shakespeare's  own  (commonly, 
we  may  believe,  against  his  will),  but  affix  his  name  to  plays 
with  which  he  had  nothing  to  do.  Within  the  lifetime  of  no 
Elizabethan  dramatist  were  half  so  many  plays  printed  as  of 
Shakespeare;  and  of  no  other  playAvright  can  it  be  said  that 
his  work  was  so  often  pirated  or  his  name  so  frequently  mis- 
used. This  points  to  but  one  thing,  the  name  of  Shakespeare 
was  a  name  to  conjure  with  in  his  day;  people  wanted  to  read 
what  they  had  heard  of  his  on  the  boards. 

We  know  that  this  repute  came  in  the  first  instance  from 
the  theater.  In  1595  Shakespeare  is  mentioned  in  the 
accounts  of  the  Office  of  the  Revels;  his  membership  in  the 
leading  theatrical  company  of  the  day,  the  Chamberlain's, 
is  established  by  record  in  1594;  and  he  is  named,  especially 
as  an  actor  in  Jonson's  Every  Man  in  His  Humor  in  1598. 
Meanwhile  there  is  evidence  of  his  affiliation  with  his  home 
and  family  in  Stratford  and  of  his  increase  in  wealth  and  im- 
portance. His  son  Hamnet  —  strange  variant  of  Hamlet  — 
is  buried  at  Stratford  in  1596;  and  a  draft  of  arms  is  granted, 
not  to  William,  but  to  John  Shakespeare,  his  father.  In  the 
next  year  the  poet  purchases  the  freehold  of  New  Place,  the 
finest  house  in  his  native  town,  and  we  hear  of  other  purchases 
intended  and  consummated.  There  is  correspondence  as  to 
the  loan  by  Shakespeare  of  money  and  as  to  petty  suits  at  law, 
brought  and  gained  by  him.  Death  comes  to  his  family 
again,  his  father  dying  in  1601,  his  brother  Edmund  in  1607, 
his  mother  the  following  year.  His  first-born,  Susanna,  mar- 
ries in  the  former  year  and  Shakespeare  becomes  a  grand- 
father. There  is  the  purchase  of  more  land,  of  property  in 
Stratford  and  in  London,  and  there  are  legacies  of  friendship 
left  to  Shakespeare.  At  last  there  is  his  will,  executed  March 
25,  1616,  and  on  April  23,  traditionally  considered  Shake- 
speare's birthday,  the  man  is  no  more.  These  are  the  facts 
in  the  main.     Into  the  traditions  we  cannot  here  enter. 

Books  have  been  written  on  what  Shakespeare  learned  at 


SHAKESPEARE'S   EDUCATION  151 

school;  he  learned  more  out  of  doors.  Jonson  said  that  he 
had  little  Latin  and  less  Greek,  and  Aubrey  gossips  that  he 
knew  Latin  pretty  well.  The  two  opinions  tally,  as  Jonson 
and  Aubrey  viewed  Latin  from  different  quarters.  The  late 
Churton  Collins,  in  a  scholarly  essay  on  the  learning  of  Shake- 
speare, has  quite  upset  the  old  notion  that  Shakespeare  was 
unacquainted  with  the  classical  authors;  but  it  may  be  sus- 
pected that  Shakespeare  never  read  a  foreign  book  if  he  could 
obtain  the  matter  that  he  wanted  in  translation.  Shake- 
speare was  not  so  learned  a  man  as  Ben  Jonson,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  Camden  or  Bacon;  but  it  has  now  long  been  exploded 
that  Shakespeare  was  "a  rude,  natural-born  genius,"  a 
species  of  inspired  idiot  who  knew  not  the  wise  things  that 
he  was  uttering.  As  Bagehot  so  happily  put  it:  "There  is 
clear  evidence  that  Shakespeare  received  the  ordinary  gram- 
mar-school education  of  his  time  and  that  he  derived  from  the 
pain  and  suffering  of  several  years,  not  exactly  an  acquaint- 
ance with  Latin  and  Greek,  but  like  Eton  boys,  a  firm  con- 
viction that  there  are  such  languages."  Moreover  the  stamp 
of  genius  is  on  Shakespeare's  life.  He  was  not  the  man  to 
submit  to  any  real  inferiority  and,  whatever  his  early  defi- 
ciencies, the  plays  attest  how  he  corrected  them.  There  is 
no  proof  that  Shakespeare  attended  the  Stratford  grammar 
school.  He  could  have  attended  no  other.  There  is  no  copy 
of  William  Lilly's  Grammar  extant  which  bears  Shakespeare's 
signature.  It  is  unlikely  that  he  studied  any  other,  for  this 
was  the  approved  Latin  book  of  his  day  and  long  after. 

The  happy  and  competent  knowledge  which  Shakespeare 
exhibits  of  many  subjects,  some  of  them  technical  and  pro- 
fessional, has  led  to  a  host  of  surmises  as  to  his  probable  occu- 
pation after  leaving  school.  He  has  been  thought  a  farmer, 
a  huntsman  (which  he  certainly  was),  a  lawyer,  a  printer,  a 
soldier,  an  usher  in  a  school,  and  a  surgeon.  Aubrey  repeated 
an  earlier  tradition  which  made  Shakespeare  exercise  his 
father's  trade  and  added  that  "when  he  killed  a  calf  he  would 
do  it  in  a  high  style  and  make  a  speech."  We  need  not 
believe  this  story;  indeed,  we  need  not  believe  a  word  of 
Aubrey;    but  it  has  been  well  observed  that  this  idle  anecdote 


152  SHAKESPEARE   IN  COMEDY 

suggests  at  least  the  theatrical  genius.  Shakespeare  used  the 
picturesque  Bible  phrase  of  his  time,  not  because  he  had 
studied  for  the  Church,  but  because  he  was  an  Elizabethan 
with  a  memory  for  the  phrase;  he  observed  with  marvelous 
accuracy  the  symptoms  of  insanity,  not  because  he  was  an 
alienist  but  because  he  was  observant  of  the  psychology  of 
man.  As  to  his  legal  acquirements.  Professor  Raleigh  re- 
marks that  "it  was  not  for  nothing  that  Shakespeare  was 
his  father's  son":  and  besides,  Shakespeare  had  lawsuits  of 
his  own.  A  late  discovery  concerning  him  discloses  a  suit 
in  which  he  was  the  successful  plaintiff  in  1615.^  As  to  all 
these  surmises  of  Shakespeare's  avocations,  let  them  remain 
surmises.  To  him  who  laboriously  acquires  a  petty  barony 
in  some  little  kingdom  of  knowledge,  the  grasp,  the  sweep,  the 
accuracy  of  Shakespeare's  perceptions  must  seem  super- 
natural, if  not  based  on  diligent  studies  such  as  his  own. 

Before  we  leave  Stratford  and  the  youth  of  Shakespeare  it 
may  be  observed  that  many  books  have  treated  Shakespeare's 
nature-lore,  his  knowledge  of  animals,  his  acquaintance  with 
birds,  his  insects,  even  his  fishes.  A  delightful  book,  The 
Diary  of  Master  William  Silence,  has  shown  the  completeness 
of  Shakespeare's  knowledge  of  the  contemporary  nomencla- 
ture of  the  popular  sports  of  hunting  and  hawking  and  his 
devotion  to  the  horse.  But  Professor  Raleigh  has  set  us 
straight  as  to  the  nature-lore  of  Shakespeare  which  was  clearly 
that  of  the  keen  but  superficial  observer,  not  that  of  the  modern 
scientific  devotee  of  nature  study.  Shakespeare  wasted  no 
time  observing  the  habits  of  animals  when  men  were  to  ob- 
serve. He  makes  plenty  of  mistakes  in  natural  history  and 
accepts  the  traditional  qualities  of  the  impossible  beasts  of 
the  medieval  bestiary,  "the  toad  that  wears  a  precious  jewel 
in  his  head,"  "the  unicorn  that  is  betrayed  with  trees,"  "the 
basilisk  that  kills  at  sight";  but  he  makes  no  mistakes  as  to 
his  men  and  women :  there  his  touch  is  certain  as  his  knowl- 
edge is  profound. 

^See  Englische  Studien,  xxxvi,  1906,  where  this  discovery  of  Profes- 
sor Wallace  is  most  conveniently  consulted.  It  was  first  communicated 
to  The  London  Standard,  October,  1 8,  1 905. 


SHAKESPEARE  AND   PREVIOUS   DRAMA     153 

Why  Shakespeare  went  up  to  London  is  perfectly  clear; 
he  was  compelled  to  make  a  living  for  his  family;  a  poaching 
expedition  and  threatened  uncomfortable  consequences  may 
have  hastened  his  departure.  When  he  first  arrived  in  the 
metropolis  is  not  so  certain.  However  it  came  about,  Shake- 
speare was  on  the  boards  as  an  actor  before  1590  and  already 
done  with  his  apprenticeship  to  the  writing  of  plays.  A  year 
or  two  later  he  is  one  of  the  sharers  or  part  owners  in  the  most 
successful  company  of  London. 

When  Shakespeare  took  his  place  in  the  lead  of  his  pro- 
fession he  found  the  public  prepared  to  welcome  and  appre- 
ciate theatrical  entertainments  by  generations  of  familiarity 
with  them;  and  he  found,  also,  a  secular  drama  already  well 
advanced  in  a  hardy  vernacular  growth,  together  with  a  stage 
which  had  passed  beyond  amateurishness  into  the  beginnings 
of  a  recognized  profession.  Moreover,  literature  had  all  but 
shaken  free  of  medievalism  with  its  allegory  and  intent  to 
instruct,  to  look  at  life  steadily  and  yet  to  see  that  life,  at 
need,  in  the  transfiguring  light  of  poetry.  Shakespeare  could 
have  learned  very  little,  except  by  way  of  warning,  of  Robert 
Wilson,  who  was  active  among  the  Earl  of  Leicester's  players 
and  the  Queen's  between  1574  and  1584;  even  although  the 
scenes  of  Antonio's  negotiations  with  Shylock  have  been 
regarded  as  "anticipated"  in  Wilson's  morality.  The  Three 
Ladies  of  London,  printed  in  the  latter  year.  Equally  slight 
for  the  coming  master  of  the  stage  must  have  been  Shake- 
speare's contact  with  the  famous  clown  of  his  time,  Richard 
Tarlton,  whose  name  has  been  attached  by  way  of  surmise  to 
an  older  play  on  subject-matter  afterwards  treated  by  Shake- 
speare in  his  histories  on  Henry  IV  and  Henry  V.  And  yet 
it  was  precisely  stuff  such  as  this  that  the  young  Shakespeare 
was  set  to  revise.  However,  Shakespeare  was  not  w'ithout 
examples  worthy  his  young  ambition,  and  in  Lyly  and 
Marlowe  he   found  them. 

Of  the  precise  chronology  of  Shakespeare's  plays,  as  of 
those  of  most  of  his  contemporaries,  we  are  far  from  certain. 
Except  for  Titus  Andronicus  and  Romeo  and  "Juliet,  which  in 
revision   falls   beyond,   the   plays   of  Shakespeare's   imitative 


154  SHAKESPEARE  IN  COMEDY 

period  are  either  romantic  comedies  or  dramas  based  on  the 
history  of  EngHsh  kings.  We  have  touched  sufficiently  on 
Titus  already  for  the  purposes  of  this  book.  Let  us  turn 
first  here  to  the  earlier  romantic  comedies.  Lovers  Labor'' s 
Lost  is  usually  assigned  to  the  earliest  place  among  the  come- 
dies of  Shakespeare  (not  later  than  1591),  and,  although  not 
published  in  quarto  form  until  1598  and  then  possibly  re- 
vised, several  features  confirm  this  position.  This  comedy, 
with  all  its  originality,  is  pronouncedly  Lylian  in  its  person- 
ages, dialogue,  and  in  type,  in  that  it  is,  like  Midas  or  Endimi- 
on,  full  of  personal,  political,  and  other  satirical  allusions.  In 
this  and  in  the  peculiarity  that  it  is  the  only  plot  of  all 
Shakespeare's  plays  which  he  appears  frankly  to  have  in- 
vented, Love's  Labor 's  Lost  stands  alone.  Shakespeare's 
knowledge  of  the  courtly  society  that  he  attempts  to  depict 
in  this  comedy  can  not  be  pronounced  other  than  amateurish 
This  is  high  life  as  seen  from  without;  and  the  frequently 
trivial  badinage  of  the  three  courtiers  and  ladies,  so  evenly 
arrayed  each  against  each,  the  absurdities  of  Holofernes,  Na- 
thaniel, and  the  rest,  despite  much  promise,  all  serve  to  confirm 
this.  Shakespeare  never  repeated  this  experiment  in  trans- 
planting the  allusive  and  satirical  court  drama  of  Lyly  to  the 
common  stage.  But  he  soon  tried  another  experiment,  in 
The  Comedy  of  Errors.  Here  he  had  the  example  of  old  Eng- 
lish plays  such  as  Ralph  Roister  Doister  and  Gascoigne's 
Supposes;  and  it  is  impossible  to  credit  him  with  ignorance 
of  Plautus,  whether  he  read  the  Menoechmi  in  some  English 
version  by  William  Warner  or  (if  there  are  difficulties  in  this) 
in  the  original.  The  Comedy  of  Errors  (written  in  1591  if 
not  even  before),  is  a  bustling  and  inventive  farce  of  action. 
It  redoubles  the  difficulties  of  the  comedy  of  mistake,  and 
produces  as  a  result  the  most  successful  specimen  of  its  class. 
It  is  worthy  of  note  that  among  the  many  imitations  of  Roman 
comedy  which  Elizabethan  drama  affords,  Shakespeare's 
Comedy  of  Errors  should  have  outstripped  all  the  efforts  of  the 
scholars.  But  Shakespeare  never  returned  to  Plautine  comedy, 
though  many  comedies  of  the  general  type,  mixed  with  that 
of  disguise,  followed  him,  developing  in  turn  through  the  work 


"THE  TWO  GENTLEMEN  OF  VERONA"    155 

of  Chapman  and  Jonson  Into  a  favorite  variety  of  the  comedy 
of  manners. 

In  his  third  extant  experimental  comedy,  The  Two  Gentle- 
men of  Ferona  (also  first  written  about  1591),  Shakespeare 
found  a  dramatic  species  to  which  he  afterwards  adhered. 
This  was  the  romantic  comedy  of  love  and  intrigue,  based  on 
Italian  tales  of  the  type  made  famous  especially  in  Painter's 
Palace  of  Pleasure,  1566.  The  plot  of  The  Two  Gentlemen 
of  Ferona  is  that  of  the  story  of  the  shepherdess,  Felismena, 
in  Monte  mayor's  Spanish  romance,  Diana  Enamorada,  with 
the  possible  intervention  of  a  lost  play.  As  to  the  romantic 
drama  in  general  type,  it  first  manifested  itself  successfully, 
as  we  have  seen,  in  the  tragical  works  of  Kyd  and  Marlowe 
or  in  dramas  of  heroical  type  like  Greene's  Orlando  and 
Alphonsus,  which  hark  back  to  Tamhtirlaine.  Save  for  trans- 
lations of  Italian  comedies  such  as  Supposes  by  Gascoigne, 
1566,  it  is  difficult  to  find  examples  of  lighter  Italian  stories 
dramatized  until  we  reach  Shakespeare.  Whetstone's  Promos 
and  Cassandra,  1578,  fulfils  the  conditions  of  an  English 
comedy  modeled  on  an  Italian  tale,  in  this  case  a  "novel"  of 
Cinthio's  Gh  Hecatommithi;  but  the  plot  is  all  but  tragic  and, 
though  free  at  least  from  Seneca,  is  far  removed  from  that 
lightsome  and  buoyant  tone  which  we  habitually  associate 
with  the  term  romantic  comedy.  Perhaps  the  only  claim  of 
Whetstone's  coarse  and  verbose  play  is  based  on  the  fact  that 
Shakespeare's  genius  subsequently  transformed  it  into  Measure 
for  Measure.  Mucedorus,  a  sprightly  if  elemental  little  comedy 
of  romantic  tone,  was  published  first  in  1595,  and,  despite 
some  notion  that  Shakespeare  may  have  had  hand  in  it,  is 
best  assigned  to  the  authorship  of  Thomas  Lodge.  But  the 
source  of  Mucedorus  is  Sydney's  Arcadia  and,  although  the 
play  is  undoubtedly  very  early,  it  is  questionable  if  it  preceded 
The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Ferona  on  the  stage.  Returning  then 
to  this  comedy,  it  becomes  important  in  the  history  of  the 
drama  not  only  because  in  it  Shakespeare  first  found  his  bent, 
but  also  because  of  its  peculiar  isolation  as  the  first  English 
comedy  dealing  romantically  with  love.  As  to  the  comedy 
itself,  despite  many  faults,  disclosing  the  continuance  of  the 


156  SHAKESPEARE   IN   COMEDY 

influence  of  Lyly,  The  Two  Gentlemen  of  Verona  gives  promise 
in  the  decision  and  discrimination  with  which  its  principal 
figures  are  drawn  —  the  faithful  Valentine,  the  recreant 
Proteus,  bright  and  generous  Sylvia  and  steadfast,  loving 
Julia  —  of  the  greater  comedies  to  come. 

After  these  earliest  comedies,  Shakespeare  applied 
himself  to  history  and  tragedy.  Into  neither  need  we  follow 
him  here;  but  rather  look  onward  to  the  only  two  other  come- 
dies that  are  accepted  as  early  by  universal  consent.  The 
Merchant  of  Venice  was  on  the  stage  by  1594,  and,  in  all 
likelihood,  modeled  on  an  old  play,  mentioned  by  Gosson  in 
1579,  in  which  apparently  both  the  story  of  the  Jew  and  that 
of  the  "Lady  of  Belmont"  were  already  combined.  By  the 
time  that  Shakespeare  turned  to  the  writing  of  this  play,  he 
had  already  deserted  the  guidance  of  Lyly  for  that  of  Marlowe, 
as  will  appear  more  fully  in  our  discussion  of  the  chronicle 
plays.  The  influence  of  Marlowe's  Barabas  on  Shake- 
speare's Shylock  has  often  been  pointed  out;  and  it  is  patent, 
whether  in  reminiscence  of  individual  traits  and  passages  or, 
as  has  been  lately  argued,  in  the  very  contrast  of  each  poet's 
conception  of  the  Jew.^  It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  the 
Jew  was  little  known  either  to  the  literature  of  the  time  or  by 
actual  acquaintance  with  him  in  the  London  of  Elizabeth. 
Aside  from  Gosson's  mention,  just  alluded  to,  and  the  Gerun- 
tus  of  Wilson's  Three  Ladies  of  London,  a  just  and  honorable 
creditor,  there  was  in  actual  life  Roderigo  Lopez,  the  queen's 
Jewish  physician,  the  trial  and  execution  of  whom  for  alleged 
complicity  in  a  plot  against  Elizabeth's  life,  early  in  1594,  ex- 
cited much  popular  interest.  Whether  it  was  this  that  led 
Shakespeare  to  his  subtle  study  of  Shylock,  as  has  been  held, 
or  not,  certain  it  is  that  tjiat  famous  character  is  conceived  in 
a  full  realization  of  the  grotesqueness  bordering  on  laughter 
and  the  pathos  bordering  on  tears  which  characterizes  his 
strange  personality  and  situation.  The  admirable  conduct 
of  this  play  in  the  successful  intermingling  of  comedy  with 
a  serious  motive  which  rises  for  a  moment  almost  to  the  height 

^  Shakespeare* s  few  and  Marlowe's  Christians,  by  William  Poel, 
Westminster  Review,  1909. 


"A  MIDSUMMER-NIGHT'S   DREAM"         157 

of  tragedy,  its  pervading  humor  and  altogether  dehghtful 
personages,  attest  that  in  The  Merchant  of  Venice  Shake- 
speare had  reached,  to  the  full,  the  manhood  of  his  genius. 

A  MiJsummer-Night's  Dream  is  usually  dated  1 595  and 
is  thought  by  some  to  have  been  written  to  celebrate  a  noble 
marriage,  a  purpose  for  which  its  grace  and  gaiety  well  fitted  it. 
No  source  has  been  found  for  the  major  plot,  though  either 
The  Knight's  Tale  of  Chaucer  or  Plutarch's  Life  of  Theseus 
may  have  serv^ed  for  the  parts  concerning  that  modified 
ancient  hero.  Here  Shakespeare  has  made  a  poet's  use  of 
the  supernatural,  creating  out  of  hints  in  popular  folk-lore 
a  new  order  of  beings  in  the  enchanting  and  dainty  fairyland 
of  Oberon  and  Titania.  With  its  forest  glades,  peopled  with 
bewildered  lovers  and  fairy  folk,  the  grotesque  histrionic  at- 
tempts of  the  "base  mechanicals,"  and  its  pseudo-classic 
background  of  ancient  Athens,  Theseus  and  his  amazonian 
bride,  A  M idsummer-N ight' s  Dream  marks  the  very  acme  of 
the  difficult  Renaissance  art  of  agglomeration;  for  only  the 
richest  fancy,  the  most  exquisite  sense  of  the  music  of  words, 
and  the  harmony  between  poetic  expression  and  poetic  thought 
could  achieve  such  artistic  unity  in  elements  so  repugnant. 

Turning  back  for  the  nonce  to  the  beginnings  of  Shake- 
speare's conversancy  with  the  stage,  the  chronicle  play  (which, 
it  may  be  interjected,  is  a  drama  dealing  in  epic  wise  with 
subjects  derived  from  the  history  of  England)  is  the  most 
striking  of  the  several  forms  of  literature  which  resulted  from 
the  realization  of  the  national  idea.  Pride  in  England's 
present  greatness,  in  the  success  of  Elizabeth's  fleet  against 
the  Armada  of  the  King  of  Spain,  and  her  skill  in  preserving 
her  throne  despite  the  fulminations  of  Rome,  begot  an  enthu- 
siasm for  the  great  deeds  of  Englishmen  in  the  past  such  as 
had  been  unknown  before.  Of  this  literature  in  other  forms 
an  account  has  already  been  given  in  the  first  chapter  of  this 
book.  It  was  inevitable  both  that  the  stage  should  share  in  this 
tide  of  patriotism  and  that  the  foremost  writer  for  that  stage 
should  contribute  most  largely  to  the  drama  of  this  type. 
Shakespeare  devoted  literally  a  third  of  his  dramatic  activity 
to  the  writing  of  plays  based  on  what  was  accepted  at  the  time 


158  CHRONICLE  HISTORY 

as  English  history,  and  he  wrote  many  more  such  chronicle 
histories,  as  they  were  called,  than  any  three  of  his  competitors 
combined.  In  these  historical  dramas,  too,  better  than  else- 
where, can  we  discern  the  probable  steps  in  his  apprentice- 
ship to  his  art. 

Three  plays  on  the  events  of  the  long  but  unhappy  reign  of 
King  Henry  VI  are  to  be  found  in  collective  editions  of  Shake- 
speare. The  first  of  these,  we  are  told  by  Nash  in  an  often 
quoted  passage,  achieved  an  unusual  success  in  1592,  espe- 
cially on  account  of  certain  vivid  scenes  in  which  the  hero, 
Talbot,  figured  in  his  warfare  against  the  French;  and  it  is 
likely  that  the  other  two  parts  followed  closely  in  consequence. 
But  if  we  examine  these  three  plays,  we  find  that  all  show  clear 
marks  of  revision  and  rewriting,  and  an  earlier  version  of  the 
second  and  the  third  parts  of  Henry  VI,  differing  materially 
from  Shakespeare's,  is  extant.  These  two  old  plays  may  be 
called  by  a  shortening  of  their  cumbrous  titles  the  first  and 
second  parts  of  The  Contention  between  the  Tiuo  Noble 
Houses  of  Tork  and  Lancaster,  or  shorter  still,  I  and  2  Con- 
tention. Part  first  of  Henry  VI  seems  to  indicate  revision 
chiefly  in  the  interpolation  of  individual  scenes;  while  the 
other  two  (2  Henry  VI  and  3  Henry  VI),  by  a  comparison 
with  their  earlier  versions  (i  and  2  Contention),  show  rewriting 
line  for  line,  in  which,  however,  a  large  proportion  of  the 
original  lines  are  retained  intact.  Some  have  held  that,  in 
these  revisions,  Shakespeare  was  only  making  over  his  own 
earlier  work.  But  none  of  this  work  was  claimed  by  him  or 
published  in  his  lifetime  as  his.  Inasmuch,  moreover,  as 
Shakespeare  was  charged  by  Greene  with  plagiarism  and  a 
passage  was  parodied  in  proof  from  one  of  these  very  plays, 
it  is  better  to  believe  that,  in  the  three  parts  oi King  Henry  VI, 
Shakespeare  was  refashioning  the  earlier  material  of  others 
or  at  least  work  in  which  he  had  only  shared  with  older  fellow 
playwrights.  The  internecine  feuds  of  the  Wars  of  the  Roses, 
detailed  so  minutely  in  this  trilogy,  seem  deficient  to  us  in 
interest  as  we  read  them  to-day.  To  the  Elizabethans  the 
theme  was  an  absorbing  one,  for  it  was  thence  that  the  stable 
Tudor  monarchy  under  which  they  lived  had  been  evolved. 


GREENE  AND  SHAKESPEARE  159 

As  to  the  quality  of  these  first  ventures  of  Shakespeare  into 
history,  their  promise  is  clear.  Of  a  mere  youth  who  could 
so  revise  the  inchoate  material  of  his  predecessors  almost 
anything  might  be  predicted. 

But  no  account  of  Shakespeare  can  be  complete  without 
a  reference  at  this  point  to  the  notorious  attack  upon  him  of 
Robert  Greene,  in  his  Groatsivorth  of  JVit  purchased  with  a 
Million  of  Repentance,  published  late  in  1592.  This  death- 
bed pam.phlet  of  poor  Greene  has  been  quoted  already  in  a 
passage  describing  the  status  of  the  contemporary  actor.  In 
an  address  to  "His  Quondam  Acquaintance,"  in  which  he  in- 
cludes Marlowe,  Peele,  and  Lodge,  Greene  bids  them  beware 
of  "these  puppets  [the  actors]  that  speak  from  our  mouths" 
and  of  "antics  garnished  in  our  colors."     And  he  continues: 

There  is  an  upstart  crow,  beautified  with  our  feathers,  that  in 
his  Tiger's  heart  ivrapt  in  a  player  s  hide  supposes  he  is  as  well  able 
to  bumbast  out  a  blank-verse  as  the  best  of  you;  and  being  an  abso- 
lute Johannes  factotum  is,  in  his  own  conceit,  the  only  Shake-scene 
in  a  country  ....  Never  more  acquaint  [those  apes]  with  your  ad- 
mired inventions,  for  it  is  pity  men  of  such  rare  wit  should  be  subject 
to  the  pleasures  of  such  rude  grooms. 

These  allusions  are  clear  to  him  who  runs.  The  "Tiber's 
heart  wrapt  in  a  player's  hide"  is  a  parody  on  "Oh  tiger's 
heart  w^apt  in  a  woman's  hide,"  applied  by  the  Duke  of  York 
to  Queen  Margaret,  the  "she-wolf  of  France,"  in  the  third 
part  o^  Henry  VI,  and  contained  in  that  part  of  the  play  which 
Shakespeare  took  over  from  the  2  Contention.  That  Greene's 
rancorous  opinion  was  not  the  prevalent  one  among  Shake- 
speare's fellows  in  his  profession,  is  proved  by  the  ample 
apology  which  Chettle  made  soon  after,  in  his  Kind-Heart's 
Dream,  for  his  part  in  the  publication  of  Greene's  unhappy 
tract. 

To  return  to  the  chronicle  play,  Shakespeare  soon  followed 
up  his  success  with  a  more  independent  effort,  the  condensa- 
tion of  two  anonymous  old  chronicle  plays,  called  The  Trouble- 
some Reign  of  King  John,  by  rewriting  into  one  effective 
tragedy.     This  must  have  been  early  in  1593.     Shakespeare's 


i6o  CHRONICLE  HISTORY 

King  John  marks  a  decided  advance,  and  this  notwithstand- 
ing much  fideHty  to  an  original  which  is  far  from  worthy  of 
contempt.  It  is  in  such  personages  as  Falconbridge,  Hubert, 
the  little  prince,  and  the  two  wrangHng  queens  that  we  find 
the  distinctness  of  characterization,  the  mingUng  of  humor 
and  pathos  that  came  later  so  much  more  fully  to  distinguish 
our  greatest  dramatic  poet.  And  in  the  dastard  John  appears, 
too,  suggestion  of  a  deeper  study  of  character.  But  Shake- 
speare was  not  content  to  stop  here.  He  turned  from  revision 
to  imitation,  recognizing,  as  who  could  avoid  it,  the  masterly 
passion  of  Marlowe  and  filled  with  ambition  to  emulate  his 
triumphs.  Richard  III,  which  must  soon  have  followed  King 
John,  in  1593,  is  Shakespeare's  one  thoroughly  Marlowesque 
tragedy.  And  this  is  patent  alike  in  the  heroic  proportions 
of  the  distorted  hero,  monster  that  he  is  of  conscious  wicked- 
ness and  crafty  design,  and  in  the  lyric  quality  of  the  emotion 
which  pervades  many  scenes.  Richard  III  must  have  been 
to  Shakespeare  a  tour  de  force  much  like  the  earlier  Titus. 
Both  are  splendid  followings  of  another  man's  gait  and  manner. 
Indeed,  if  we  would  realize  to  the  full  what  Shakespeare  could 
do  with  a  popular  historical  portrait,  his  Richard  Crookback 
should  be  compared  with  the  older  True  Tragedy  of  Richard 
III,  to  which  gross  if  strongly  written  play  he  owed  very  little. 
Marlowe's  Edward  II  must  have  been  written  within  a 
twelvemonth  of  the  date  of  his  death  in  May,  1593.  Whether 
Shakespeare's  Richard  III  preceded  Marlowe's  play  or  not, 
it  may  be  taken  as  almost  certain  that  Richard  II  was  planned 
in  direct  and  daring  em.ulation  of  Marlowe's  successful  tragedy. 
The  subject-matter  of  these  two  later  plays  is  as  nearly  identical 
as  English  history  can  afford;  for  in  each  a  monarch  who  is 
unworthy  to  rule  is  thrown,  in  the  contrast  of  circumstances, 
against  a  group  of  rebellious  barons,  and  in  each  his  prob- 
lematic character  with  his  pitiful  fall  holds  the  center  of  the 
stage.  But  in  Richard  II,  though  he  chose  Marlowe's  theme, 
Shakespeare  enfranchised  himself  from  Marlowe's  method. 
It  seems  almost  as  if  Shakespeare  had  determined  to  rival 
Marlowe  on  his  own  ground  but  in  a  manner  of  Shakespeare's 
own    choosing.     The    conception    of  the   wayward    poetical- 


MARLOWE  AND  SHAKESPEARE  i6i 

minded  king,  a  poseur  in  fortune  as  well  as  in  mischance,  the 
contrast  of  his  levity  with  the  sagacity,  unimaginativeness,  and 
political  effectiveness  of  Bolingbroke,  the  grasp  and  knowledge 
of  the  world  which  this  tragedy  presumes,  and  the  sure  touch 
and  poetry  with  which  it  is  written  and  embellished  —  all  of 
these  things  place  Richard  II  not  only  far  above  King  John 
and  Richard  III  but  disclose  Shakespeare  as  the  triumphant 
rival  of  the  now  dead  Marlowe,  even  though  it  be  confessed 
that  the  closing  scene  of  the  latter's  Edward  remained,  in  its 
terror  and  pathos,  as  yet  unequaled  b}'  the  younger  dramatist. 

In  dramas  such  as  these  of  Shakespeare  and  of  Marlowe 
the  tragedy  of  a  man  at  odds  with  fate  transcended  the  acci- 
dental circumstance  that  the  protagonist  was  an  English 
sovereign.  But  the  average  type,  that  in  which  history  was 
staged  epically  and  continuously,  remained  high  in  the  popular 
esteem.  Not  to  go  too  far  afield  here  in  the  mention  of  what 
can  be  no  more  than  mere  names  in  a  work  of  this  scope,  Peele's 
inferior  Edward  I,  1590-1591,  had  been  of  this  type;  and  so 
was  Heywood's  Edward  IV,  1594,  a  play  of  no  inconsiderable 
merit  and  dramatic  excellence;  Munday  and  Chettle's  Robin 
Hood,  Earl  of  Huntington,  1598,  and  several  like  productions. 
So  that  when  Shakespeare  put  forth,  in  1597,  the  first  part  of 
his  Henry  IV,  with  its  history  diversified  by  the  humors  of  a 
group  of  irregular  humorists,  headed  by  immortal  Falstaff, 
he  was  only  returning  to  the  epic  type  of  the  chronicle  play 
which  from  the  very  first  had  admittted  the  element  of  comedy. 
The  popularity  of  Henry  IV,  with  its  story  of  the  wild  life  of 
Prince  Hal,  the  contrasted  heroic  Hotspur  and  witty,  godless 
Falstaff  and  his  rout,  took  the  town  by  storm,  and  a  second 
part  was  almost  immediately  demanded.  To  this  Shake- 
speare responded  in  2  Henry  IV,  and  the  following  year  wit- 
nessed the  conclusion  of  the  trilogy  in  Henry  V,  England's 
ideal  king  in  action  in  triumphant  warfare  with  England's 
hereditary  enemy,  France. 

In  these  three  dramas  we  have  the  height  to  which  the 
English  chronicle  play  attained.  Shakespeare  made  as  much 
of  the  undramatic  elements  of  continuous  history  as  was  pos- 
sible and  he  covered  their  inherent  want  of  cohesion  with  his 


i62  CHRONICLE  HISTORY 

consummate  art  of  portraiture,  character  thrown  into  con- 
trast, and  with  the  incessant  play  of  his  incomparable  humor. 
The  picture  of  the  hero  king,  Henry  V,  when  all  has  been  said, 
is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  in  Shakespeare.  For  it  is  the 
practical,  unimaginative  man  of  action,  a  conformist  at  heart 
despite  his  youthful  escapades,  who  may  be  conceived  to  be 
the  most  difficult  for  the  imaginative  and  poetical  mind  to 
appreciate  and  sympathetically  reproduce.  But  Shakespeare 
himself  was  a  confident  and  sagacious  man  of  affairs;  and 
there  are  no  limits  to  the  catholicity  of  his  sympathies  and 
affections.  Shakespeare  is  as  present  in  the  stern  and  in- 
evitable repudiation  of  Falstaff  by  the  regenerate  young  king 
as  he  is  in  his  revels  and  those  of  his  pals,  royal  and  common, 
at  the  Boar's  Head  Tavern  in  Eastcheap. 

Falstaff  is  more  frequently  mentioned  in  contemporary 
allusion  than  any  other  character  of  Shakespeare;  and  the 
first  part  of  Henry  IV  (with  Richard  III,  for  other  reasons) 
reached  a  larger  number  of  editions  within  the  period  of 
Shakespeare's  lifetime  than  any  other  one  of  his  plays.  This 
popularity  led  also  to  imitation.  Four  poets  in  the  employ 
of  Henslowe  —  Munday,  Drayton,  Wilson  the  younger  and 
Hathway  —  set  to  work  on  a  hurry  order  to  write  a  rival  play 
and  produced  two  plays  on  the  life  of  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  under 
which  name  Shakespeare  seems  at  first  to  have  figured  Sir 
John  Falstaff.  Only  one  of  these  plays  remains  extant  and 
it  is  far  from  deficient  either  in  humor  or  dramatic  spirit; 
although,  it  must  be  confessed,  that  the  thievish  hedge-priest. 
Sir  John  of  Wrotham,  is  a  petty  and  futile  attempt  to  rival  the 
unparalleled  wit  of  Falstaff.  A  tradition  relates  that,  delighted 
with  these  plays  of  Henry  IV,  Queen  Elizabeth  expressed  a 
wish  to  see  Falstaff  depicted  in  love  and  that  the  Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor,  1 598,  was  Shakespeare's  reply.  Clever  and 
diverting  comedy  that  it  is,  it  is  also  notable  as  the  only  one  of 
Shakespeare's  frankly  to  accept  an  English  scene.  The  buf- 
feted and  defeated  Falstaff  of  the  Merry  Wives  is  but  a  shadow 
in  silhouette  in  comparison  with  the  robust  lover  of  Doll 
Tearsheet  in  2  Henry  IV. 

Although  Henry  VIII  is  a  chronicle  play,  consideration 


OBITUARY  PLAYS  163 

of  it  may  be  deferred  for  the  present  because  of  its  affiliations, 
by  reason  of  Fletcher's  hand  in  it,  with  the  later  plays  of 
Shakespeare.  Of  the  chronicle  play  in  general  it  may  be 
sufficient  to  say  that  it  flourished  in  great  variety  of  combi- 
nation with  other  dramatic  elements  especially  throughout  the 
last  ten  years  of  Elizabeth's  reign.  In  tragedy  it  begot  such 
productions  as  Thomas  of  Woodstock,  1 59 1,  an  exceedingly 
able  anonymous  play  on  events  in  the  reign  of  Richard  II 
which  preceded  Shakespeare's  tragedy  of  that  sovereign;  it 
mingled  with  drama  of  domestic  type  in  Heywood's  Edward 
IV,  with  comedy  of  disguise  in  Look  About  Tou,  1594,  and  the 
Robin  Hood  plays  of  Munday  and  Chettle;  and  continued  in 
the  dramatic  biographies  of  lesser  historical  personages  such 
as  Sir  Thomas  Moore,  Cromwell,  Stukeley  (ranging  from  1590 
to  1596),  and  many  more.  On  the  death  of  the  queen  a  series 
of  obituary  plays  were  staged,  detailing  the  principal  events 
of  her  life,  directly  as  in  Heyvvood's  //  Tou  Know  Me  Not  Tou 
Know  Nobody;  allegorically  in  Dekker's  JVhore  of  Babylon;  or 
dealing  with  the  history  of  her  immediate  predecessors,  as  in 
Sir  Thomas  Wyatt,  the  scene  of  which  is  laid  in  the  reign  of 
Queen  Mary;  or  in  Rowley's  JVhen  Tou  See  Me  Tou  Know 
Me,  which  describes  events  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII.  It  is 
best  to  place  Shakespeare's  play  on  this  monarch  in  this  group, 
which  falls  within  the  first  three  years  of  James,  whatever  may 
have  been  its  subsequent  history. 

Still  another  variation  from  the  usual  type  of  the  chronicle 
play  was  that  which  dealt  chronicle  wise  with  the  legendary 
history  of  England.  Among  Elizabethan  annalists  and 
writers  of  plays  little  distinction  was  drawn  between  the  deeds 
of  Brutus,  legendary  founder  of  Britain,  Macbeth,  and  Henry 
V;  for  all  were  fish  to  the  historical  drag-nets  of  the  time. 
Gorboduc  and  Jocasta  first  levied  on  material  of  the  mythical 
historical  type,  although  inspired  primarily  by  Seneca.  Peele 
apparently  was  the  first  to  transfer  this  species  of  tragedy  to 
the  popular  stage  in  Locrine,  1586,  and  the  older  King  Leir, 
staged  about  1594,  and  perhaps  by  Lodge,  is  another  ex- 
ample. The  Birth  of  Merlin,  1 597,  by  William  Rowley  and 
several  like  productions  soon  followed.     It  was  this  type  of 


i64  CHRONICLE  HISTORY 

drama  in  its  tragic  form  that  Shakespeare  soon  glorified  in 
Macbeth  and  King  Lear.  The  final  absorption  of  the  chron- 
icle play  was  romantic  and  in  this,  too,  Shakespeare  shared  in 
such  a  play  as  Cymheline,  the  scene  of  which  is  legendary 
ancient  Britain,  although  its  interest  is  purely  romantic. 

In  1598  Francis  Meres  included  in  his  Palladis  Tamia, 
"A  Comparative  Discourse  of  our  English  Poets  with  the 
Greek,  Latin  and  Italian  Poets,"  recognizing  Shakespeare 
therein  as  the  greatest  dramatist  and  poet  of  his  day  and  de- 
claring him  "most  excellent  in  both  kinds  [that  is,  comedy  and 
tragedy]  for  the  stage."  His  sonnets,  as  yet  unpublished,  his 
narrative  poems,  and  twelve  plays  are  mentioned  by  name; 
and  the  list  includes  all  the  plays  named  in  this  chapter  except 
one,  Henry  V,  which  had  not  yet  been  staged.  Meres  further 
names  a  comedy  under  title  o^  Love's  Labor  s  Won.  Some  have 
thought  this  a  lost  play,  others  have  identified  it  with  Much 
Ado  About  Nothing  or  with  All  \<  Well  that  Ends  Well.  If  (as 
still  others  have  surmised),  it  was  an  earlier  name  for  the  Tam- 
ing of  the  Shrew,  that  play,  also,  may  have  been  among  the 
experiments  of  Shakespeare  in  comedy,  though  its  known 
derivation  from  two  earlier  plays,  The  Tanning  of  a  Shrew 
and  Gascoigne's  Supposes,  leaves  it  not  improbable  that  Shake- 
speare, whatever  the  period  of  his  work,  was  only  the  reviser. 

Six  comedies  of  Shakespeare  remain  above  those  already 
mentioned  to  attest  the  height  of  his  dramatic  genius  in  this 
kind  of  play  within  the  remaining  years  of  Elizabeth's  reign. 
Of  these  Much  Ado  About  Nothing  is  usually  supposed  to  have 
been  staged  soon  after  the  appearance  in  print  of  Meres' 
"comparative  discourse."  The  story  of  Hero  and  Claudio 
was  derived  by  Shakespeare  from  a  novel  of  Bandello,  though 
probably  not  without  the  intervention  of  an  English  play. 
The  delightful  courtship  of  Beatrice  and  Benedick  seems  an 
amplification  of  the  relations  of  Rosaline  and  Biron  in  Love's 
Labor  's  Lost,  and  in  its  sheer  comedy  affords  a  happy  contrast 
to  the  somber  elements  of  the  major  plot  of  Don  John's  machi- 
nations. Dogberry  and  Verges,  though  their  originals  might 
well  have  kept  the  peace  in  any  hamlet  in  England,  were  dis- 
cernible in  all  their  unmitigated  absurdity  only  by  the  eye  of 


"AS  YOU  LIKE  IT"  165 

their  creator.  Lightsome  and  joyous  As  Tou  Like  It,  on  the 
stage  by  1599,  is  an  interesting  example  of  Shakespeare's 
fortunate  use  of  material  near  at  hand.  As  a  rule  and  es- 
pecially in  his  earlier  period,  the  great  dramatist  preferred  the 
rewriting  of  a  play  to  any  other  process.  Some  twenty  of  his 
plays  are  almost  certainly  so  derived  from  former  dramas, 
English  or  foreign.  In  As  Tou  Like  It,  Shakespeare's  im- 
mediate source  was  the  pleasing  pastoral  romance  of  Lodge, 
known  as  Rosalynd  or  Euphues'  Golden  Legacy.  In  turning 
Lodge's  story  into  a  play  Shakespeare  amended  its  Euphuistic 
manner,  which  was  now  a  fashion  of  the  past;  and  while  he 
retained  some  of  the  pastoral  spirit,  he  added  to  it  the  freshness 
that  pervades  the  English  conception  of  an  out-door  life  of 
outlawry  contained  in  the  ballads  of  Robin  Hood,  and  sub- 
mitted the  whole  to  much  delicate  raillery.  The  characters, 
too,  as  we  compare  them  with  Lodge's  originals,  are  more 
subtly  conceived  and  cast  in  a  finer  mold.  Their  motives  are 
more  elevated  and  they  themselves  far  less  conventionally 
pastoral.  There  is  no  more  delightful  love-making  than  that 
of  Orlando  and  his  Rosalind,  and  when  we  recall  that  the  mel- 
ancholy Jaques,  Touchstone  with  all  his  quips,  his  Audrey, 
and  other  characters  are  Shakespeare's  additions  to  the  tale, 
we  can  see  how  he  could  better  admirable  material  and  make 
out  of  a  pleasing  tale  a  comedy  of  unmatchable  wit,  wisdom, 
and  lyrical  beauty. 

Twelfth  Night  or  What  Tou  Will,  1 60 1,  offers  a  tempting 
problem  to  the  seekers  after  sources  in  which  no  less  than  five 
plays,  Italian,  Latin,  and  German,  and  three  stories  are  in- 
volved. Although  a  good  prima  facie  case  has  been  made  out 
for  Shakespeare's  acquaintance  with  a  Latin  comedy  called 
La-lia,  he  doubtless  found  his  chief  material  in  the  story  of 
A polontus  and  Silla,  in  Barnahe  Riche,  his  Farewell  to  the  Mil- 
itary Profession,  and  Malvolio's  pretended  madness  may  have 
been  suggested  in  another  story  of  the  same  volume.  Once 
more,  if  we  compare  Shakespeare  with  his  sources,  we  find  how 
immeasurably  he  has  refined  his  personages  and  the  motives 
that  guide  their  actions,  how  he  has  condensed,  leaving  out 
the  irrelevant  and  repetitious,  to  create  a  whole  group  of  char- 


i66  LATER  COMEDIES 

acters  —  Malvolio,  Sir  Toby,  Sir  Andrew,  Maria,  and  Feste, 
most  fascinating  of  his  clowns  —  and  give  coherence  to  one  of 
the  most  delectable  of  his  comedies. 

What  event  happened  in  the  life  of  Shakespeare  to  produce 
the  revulsion  from  all  that  was  bright  and  joyous  as  depicted 
in  the  comedies  just  enumerated  to  the  more  serious  themes 
of////  's  Well  That  Ends  Well  and  Measure  for  Measure  and  the 
gloom  and  misanthropy  of  Troilus  and  Cressida  we  can  never 
know.  Perhaps  the  sonnets  —  which  with  the  last-named 
play  are  equally  of  the  literature  of  disenchantment  —  paral- 
leled these  weightier  dramatic  works.  Perhaps  these  were  no 
more  than  the  passing  moods  that  may  beget  in  the  musical 
composer,  for  example,  the  composition  of  a  scherzo  or  rhap- 
sody on  one  day,  and  on  the  next  a  requiem.  All 's  Well  That 
Ends  Well  is  commonly  dated  about  1602,  although  evidence 
has  been  found  in  the  text  to  indicate  that  the  comedy,  as  we 
have  it,  is  the  revision  of  earlier  work,  perhaps  the  play  named 
by  Meres  in  1598  as  Love's  Labor  's  Won.  The  story  of  Helena, 
the  physician's  daughter,  her  cure  of  the  king  of  France  and 
her  pursuit  and  winning  in  the  end  of  her  recreant  husband,  all 
is  to  be  found  in  The  Palace  of  Pleasure,  borrowed  thence  from 
Bandello.  But  the  Countess  of  Roussilon,  most  engaging 
picture  of  elderly  womanhood,  Lafeu  the  steward,  and  the 
cowardly  boaster,  ParoUes,  all  are  of  Shakespeare's  invention, 
as  is  the  difficult  handling  of  the  character  of  the  heroine  in  a 
situation  little  calculated  under  ordinary  circumstances  to  in- 
spire our  admiration  and  consent.  It  has  been  held  that  Bert- 
ram's base  associates,  his  hesitation,  and  plain  lying  in  the 
denouement  (which  is  Shakespeare's  entirely),  come  "peri- 
lously near  overshooting  the  mark"  in  the  effort  to  enlist  our 
sympathies  on  the  side  of  Helena;  and  the  play  has  been  more 
seriously  impugned  for  the  coarseness  and  the  daring  of  Hel- 
ena's device  to  trick  her  husband  into  her  arms.  But  granting 
all  this,  Shakespeare's  power  over  character  and  plot  had  not 
failed  him  in  All 's  Well.  Similarly,  Measure  for  Measure  has 
been  submitted  to  criticism  on  the  score  of  its  coarseness  of 
detail  in  certain  scenes  and  for  its  frank  and  unhesitating  treat- 
ment of  a  subject  which  modern  daintiness  affects  to  ignore. 


"TROILUS  AND  CRESSIDA"  167 

Measure  for  Measure  contains  passages  which  seem  to  place 
its  staging  after  the  accession  of  James  in  1603.  If  we  are  to 
judge  this  powerful  and  unpleasant  play  of  Shakespeare  just- 
ly, we  must  recognize  how  he  has  humanized  the  repellant 
qualities  of  Whetstone's  Promos  and  Cassandra,  his  original 
in  the  tempted  Puritan,  Angelo,  in  peerless  and  immaculate 
Isabella,  and  her  weak  and  erring  brother,  Claudio. 

Among  the  many  problems  that  the  plays  of  Shakespeare 
raise,  few  are  more  nearly  insoluble  than  those  involved  in  the 
strange  but  in  no  wise  inferior  "comedy"  of  Troilus  and  Cres- 
sida.  The  work  was  registered  in  1603,  printed  in  quarto 
with  two  different  title-pages  but  identical  texts  in  1609,  and 
reprinted  in  the  folio  with  many  detailed  differences.  There 
are  parts  of  Troilus  and  Cressida  which  seem  the  work  of  an- 
other hand,  yet  there  are  passages  unmistakably  Shakespeare's 
at  his  best.  The  tone  of  the  play  is  not  only  unheroic  but  dis- 
tinctly bitter  and  satirical  at  times;  and  it  has  been  thought 
by  some  that  in  Troilus  and  Cressida  we  have  Shakespeare's 
contribution  to  the  war  of  the  theaters,  of  which  we  shall  hear 
more  in  the  next  chapter,  and  that  the  gross  figure  of  Ajax  is 
Shakespeare's  attack  on  Ben  Jonson.  The  story  of  Troilus 
and  the  faithless  Cressida  was  a  favorite  subject  not  only  in  the 
Middle  Ages  (as  Chaucer  alone  is  sufficient  to  witness),  but  in 
the  drama  preceding  Shakespeare.  The  dramatist  may  well 
have  caught  the  spirit  that  converts  the  Trojan  heroes  into 
medieval  knights,  shivering  lances  for  fair  ladies,  and  the  satir- 
ical tone  in  his  treatment  of  antiquity  from  some  one  of  the 
four  or  five  plays  on  this  subject,  his  predecessors,  or  from 
Greene's  Euphues  his  Censure  to  Philautus,  as  has  been  sur- 
mised. Certain  it  is  that  vividly  conceived  as  are  Shakespeare's 
Cressida  and  Pandarus,  bearing  comparison  with  their  originals 
in  Chaucer,  heroic  as  is  Troilus,  subtle  and  worldly  wise  as  is 
Ulysses,  the  effect  of  this  drama  is  disheartening,  for  here  alone 
within  the  range  of  Shakespeare's  dramatic  activity  do  we  feel 
that  his  faith  in  man  has  forsaken  him  and  he  has  substituted 
for  the  nonce  doubt,  suspicion,  and  misanthropy  for  the  larger 
traits  of  mind  and  heart  that  are  prevailingly  his. 

Thus  as  the  reign  of  the  old  queen  was  drawing  to  its  close, 


i68  LATER  COMEDIES 

we  find  Shakespeare  established  in  a  worldly  prosperity  and 
success  in  his  art  that  drew  the  eyes  of  envy  and  admiration 
upon  him.  His  thrift  extended  not  only  to  personal  invest- 
ments in  tithes  and  the  purchase  for  his  age  of  the  best  house 
in  Stratford;  it  extended  to  a  prudent  foresight  as  to  the  future 
of  his  company  when  Elizabeth's  successor  should  come  to  the 
throne.  There  is  a  well-known  topical  allusion  to  the  depart- 
ure of  the  young  and  popular  Earl  of  Essex  for  Ireland  in  the 
prologue  to  the  last  act  oi  Henry  V;  and  a  well-authenticated 
story  tells  of  the  acting,  by  men  of  Shakespeare's  company, 
of  Richard  II  before  the  conspirators  at  the  time  of  the  Essex 
rebellion,  that  their  courage  might  be  whetted  and  an  example 
set  them  of  the  deposition  of  an  English  sovereign.  Plainly 
Shakespeare  looked  foreward  hopefully  to  the  new  reign  to 
come.  He  did  more.  With  his  company  in  disgrace  in  1601 
for  these  performances,  he  made  a  business  alliance  with  one 
Laurence  Fletcher,  an  actor  who  had  already  taken  a  troupe  to 
Edinburgh  and  was  known  personally  to  King  James;  and 
the  upshot  of  this  alliance  appeared  in  the  circumstance  that, 
on  the  accession  of  the  king,  the  Cham.berlain's  men  (Shake- 
speare's company),  was  the  first  to  pass  under  the  royal  pat- 
ronage, becoming  the  King's  players. 

But  there  are  other  things  to  contemplate  in  Shakespeare's 
rise  within  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  Without  seeking  as 
yet  the  heights  of  the  greater  tragedies,  Shakespeare  had  trav- 
eled far  from  the  trivialities  of  Love's  Labor  's  Lost  to  the  con- 
summate comedy  of  Twelfth  Night  and  Js  Tou  Like  It. 
Books  have  been  written  on  this  absorbing  theme;  and  the 
development  of  Shakespeare's  genius  has  been  traced  in  his 
verse  and  his  style,  his  rhetoric  and  his  taste,  and  in  the  larger 
influences  of  his  experience  and  contact  with  men.  Clearly 
even  Shakespeare  must  once  have  been  an  apprentice  to  his 
art;  and  quite  as  certainly  he  soon  transcended  all  the  tricks 
and  rules  of  the  plajrwright's  trade.  An  attempt  to  trace  the 
poetical  growth  of  Marlowe  is  frustrated  at  once  by  the  brevity 
of  his  meteoric  career.  On  the  other  hand,  Ben  Jonson  was 
too  much  the  conscious  artist,  despite  the  length  of  his  life,  too 


GROWTH  IN  SHAKESPEARE  169 

much  the  constructive  mechanician  of  his  own  artistic  develop- 
ment, to  make  it  possible  for  us  to  observe  in  him  those  pro- 
cesses in  the  unfolding  of  genius  which  in  their  orderliness  and 
their  inevitability  are  as  capable  of  prognostication  as  the  pro- 
cesses of  nature.  Shakespeare's  career  as  a  dramatist  was  of 
at  least  twenty  years'  continuance.  His  openness  to  impres- 
sions was  that  of  a  field  long  lain  fallow;  and,  save  for  certain 
storms  that  beset  all  life,  his  calm  and  benignity  was  that  of 
nature  and  of  the  wide  heavens.  It  is  here  that  we  can 
look  for  natural  growth,  for  development  as  obvious  and 
rational  as  the  unfolding  of  a  flower.  It  is  not  only  that  Shake- 
speare was  imaginatively  and  creatively  the  most  richly  en- 
dowed of  mankind;  he  was  happy  in  suffering  fewer  lets  and 
hinderances  in  his  development  than  most  men.  He  did  not 
see  life  through  learned  and  classical  spectacles  like  Jonson, 
nor  through  the  kaleidoscopic  lenses  of  Italian  romance  and 
allegory  as  did  Spenser.  He  was  not  hampered,  like  Sidney, 
by  the  necessity  of  experimentation  in  literature;  nor  led  on  by 
speculation  to  the  overturning  of  the  reasoning  of  a  scholastic 
world  like  Bacon.  It  may  be  confidently  affirmed  that  Shake- 
speare, better  than  most  writers,  yields  to  that  analysis  that 
discloses  an  orderly  growth  in  all  that  goes  to  constitute  the 
outward  as  w^ell  as  the  spiritual  and  inward  qualities  of 
genius. 

And  when  this  analysis  is  made,  we  find,  to  summarize, 
first  a  versification  trending  gradually  from  a  certain  degree 
of  regularity  and  rigidity  to  the  freedom  of  a  master  of  his 
craft  in  the  employment  of  pauses,  redundancy,  suppression  or 
substitution  of  syllables,  whereby  Shakespeare's  blank-verse 
becomes  a  thoroughly  plastic  medium  in  his  hands,  adaptable, 
as  English  verse  had  never  been  before,  to  the  thousand  moods 
that  constitute  the  demands  of  the  drama.  Secondly,  as  to 
Shakespeare's  style,  we  find  it  characterized  by  affluence  in 
diction  and  vocabulary,  by  a  lavish,  at  times  extravagant,  use 
of  what  he  has,  and  by  spontaneity,  absolute  ease  and  readi- 
ness, and  as  absolute  an  unrestraint.  Let  us  take  two  passages 
in   conclusion   of  this   matter,  the  first  from  A  Midsummer- 


170  LATER  COMEDIES 

Night's  Dream,  the  second  (if  we  may  look  forward  for  the 
moment)  from  Cymbeline. 

These  are  the  forgeries  of  jealousy: 

And  never,  since  the  middle  summer's  spring, 

Met  we  on  hill,  in  dale,  forest,  or  mead. 

By  paved  fountain  or  by  rushy  brook. 

Or  in  the  beached  margent  of  the  sea, 

To  dance  our  ringlets  to  the  whistling  wind 

But  with  thy  brawls  thou  hast  disturb'd  our  sport. 

Therefore  the  winds,  piping  to  us  in  vain. 

As  in  revenge,  have  suck'd  up  from  the  sea 

Contagious  fogs;   which,  falling  m  the  land, 

Have  every  petty  river  made  so  proud. 

That  they  have  overborne  their  continents: 

The  ox  hath  therefore  stretch'd  his  yoke  in  vain, 

The  ploughman  lost  his  sweat;   and  the  green  corn 

Hath  rotted  ere  his  youth  attain'd  a  beard: 

The  fold  stands  empty  in  the  drowned  field. 

And  crows  are  fatted  with  the  murrain  flock; 

The  nine-men's  morris  is  fill'd  up  with  mud; 

And  the  quaint  mazes  in  the  wanton  green. 

For  lack  of  tread,  are  undistinguishable: 

The  human  mortals  want  their  winter  cheer; 

No  night  is  now  with  hymn  or  carol  blest:  — 

Therefore  the  moon,  the  governess  of  floods, 

Pale  in  her  anger,  washes  all  the  air, 

That  rheumatic  diseases  do  abound: 

And  thorough  this  distemperature  we  see 

The  seasons  alter:   hoary-headed  frosts 

Fall  in  the  fresh  lap  of  the  crimson  rose; 

And  on  old  Hiems'  thin  and  icy  crown 

An  odorous  chaplet  of  sweet  summer  buds 

Is,  as  in  mockery,  set;  the  spring,  the  summer, 

The  childing  autumn,  angry  winter,  change 

Their  wonted  liveries;   and  the  mazed  world, 

By  their  increase,  now  knows  not  which  is  which: 

And  this  same  progeny  of  evils  comes 

From  our  debate,  from  our  dissension; 

We  are  their  parents  and  original. 


GROWTH  IN  SHAKESPEARE  171 

Away!  —  I  do  condemn  mine  ears  that  have 
So  long  attended  thee.     If  thou  wert  honorable, 
Thou  wouldst  have  told  this  tale  for  virtue,  not 
For  such  an  end  thou  seek'st,  —  as  base  as  strange. 
Thou  wrong'st  a  gentleman  who  is  as  far 
From  thy  report  as  thou  from  honor;   and 
Solicit'st  here  a  lady  that  disdains 
Thee  and  the  devil  alike.  —  What  ho,  Pisanio! 
The  king,  my  father,  shall  be  made  acquainted 
Of  thy  assault:   if  he  shall  think  it  fit, 
A  saucv  stranger  in  his  court,  to  mart 
As  in  a  Romish  stew,  and  to  expound 
His  beastly  mind  to  us,  —  he  hath  a  court 
He  little  cares  for,  and  a  daughter  who 
He  not  respects  at  all.  —  What  ho,  Pisanio! 

In  the  former  of  these  quotations  it  matters  little  that  the  em- 
broidery runs  a  little  less  or  more  amply.  In  Imogen's  strong 
defiance  of  a  treachery  that  only  her  innocence  has  made  her 
dull  to  perceive,  there  is  not  a  word  too  much.  Shakespeare 
seldom  errs  with  a  display  of  luxuriance  in  these  supreme 
dramatic  moments;  but  full  restraint,  like  much  else,  came, 
even  with  Shakespeare,  after  years  and  trial. 

Other  things  that  mark  the  development  of  Shakespeare's 
genius  concern  his  gradual  improvement  in  taste,  in  dramatic 
technique,  characterization,  and  in  the  attitude  that  he  assumes 
towards  the  creatures  of  his  brain.  Shakespeare  never  en- 
tirely freed  himself  of  the  tyranny  of  the  word.  His  age  seems 
never  to  have  wearied  of  puns,  and  verbal  fence  and  quibble 
On  the  other  hand  and  barring  this,  with  time  came  power 
and  grasp.  And  nowhere  in  our  literature  is  there  to  be  found 
a  more  marvelous  display  of  the  ductility,  the  subtle  music, 
the  significance  and  associative  force  of  English  words,  than 
these  plays  disclose  in  their  finer  passages. 

This  chapter  has  already  exceeded  its  bounds.  To  an- 
other, that  on  the  heyday  of  tragedy,  must  be  deferred  the 
further  discussion  of  Shakespeare's  development  in  the  dra- 
matic technique  and  larger  qualities  of  his  art. 


CHAPTER  X 

VERNACULAR  DRAMA  OF   DEKKER,   HEYWOOD, 
AND  MIDDLETON 

AS  compared  with  that  of  EHzabeth,  few  ages  in  the 
world's  history  have  accepted  with  such  unaffected 
faith  at  once  the  hard  inevitabiHty  of  facts  and  the  enchanting 
possibiHties  of  fortune.  And  in  few  times  was  Hfe  in  the  coarse 
fiber  of  its  daily  routine  so  shot  with  bright  threads  of  romantic 
experience  and  adventure.  It  is  related  that  the  queen,  who 
had  ardently  expressed  to  the  Scottish  ambassador,  Melville, 
her  wish  that  she  might  see  and  speak  with  her  dear  sister. 
Queen  Mary,  was  taken  with  Melville's  proposal  that,  dressed 
as  a  page,  her  majesty  accompany  his  train  to  Scotland;  and 
that  she  dallied  with  the  idea  for  days.  As  to  the  stage,  so 
peculiarly  the  mirror  of  the  time,  few  sorts  of  Elizabethan 
thought  and  action  were  left  unrepresented  thereon;  and  that 
representation,  as  often  as  not,  mingled  with  what  was  familiar 
and  at  hand,  things  rare  and  strange,  recognizing  that  the 
separation  of  these  two,  the  visible  and  the  invisible,  the 
actual  and  the  ideal,  is  more  a  habit  of  thinking  than  it  is 
ever  a  feature  of  life  itself. 

It  was  this  combination  of  a  recognition  of  the  actualities 
of  life  with  a  fine  romantic  spirit  that  raised  the  eclectic  and 
somewhat  slovenly  art  of  Greene  to  a  position  of  respect; 
and  in  Dekker,  Greene's  successor  in  certain  forms  of  the 
drama  as  well  as  in  the  pamphlet,  we  find  no  dissimilar  com- 
bination Of  the  life  and  extraction  of  Thomas  Dekker 
little  is  known.  He  informs  us  in  one  of  his  pamphlets  that 
he  was  born  in  London.  Probably  this  was  not  far  from 
1570.  The  form  of  his  name  and  his  evident  familiarity  with 
the  Dutch  language  suggest  that  his  family  came  originally 
from  the  Low  Countries.  Dekker  first  appears  as  a  dramatist 
in  1598,  though  it  is  not  unlikely  that  by  that  time  he  had 

172 


DEKKER'S  "OLD  FORTUNATUS"  173 

been  for  several  years  conversant  w^ith  the  stage.  He  con- 
tinued to  v^rite  plays,  pamphlets,  broadsides,  anything,  for 
forty  years,  and  at  one  time  prepared  pageants  for  the  city. 
Dekker's  life  was  full  of  struggle  and  toil,  he  was  much  in 
prison  for  debt  and  received  charity  at  the  hands  of  Edward 
Alleyn,  the  actor.  In  the  drama  Dekker  exhibits  an  art  as 
mixed  and  varied  as  that  of  Greene  himself.  As  to  subject 
and  general  conduct,  Dekker  is  governed  almost  completely 
by  the  taste  and  demands  of  the  city,  even  though  he  rises 
occasionally  into  the  regions  of  the  truest  poetry  as  in  passages 
of  Old  Fortunatus.  This  comedy  was  on  the  stage  by  1599. 
In  plot  it  levies,  as  Faustus  did  before  it,  on  the  old  romantic 
folk-lore  of  Germany;  although  Dekker  also  contrives  to 
give  to  the  whole  that  flavor  of  the  English  morality  which  we 
find  so  strong  in  Marlowe's  tragedy.  The  story  of  Dekker's 
comedy  deals  with  Fortunatus,  an  elderly  native  of  Cyprus, 
who  receives  at  the  hands  of  the  goddess  of  fortune  the  gift 
of  an  inexhaustible  purse  and  steals  from  "the  Soudan  of 
Babylon"  a  cap  which  has  the  power  to  convey  the  wearer 
wherever  he  may  desire.  Fortunatus  soon  dies  in  his  folly  — 
for  he  has  chosen  wealth  when  he  might  have  had  better  things 
—  and  the  play  proceeds  to  set  forth  the  contrasted  careers 
of  his  two  sons,  Ampedo,  who  is  virtue,  ignorant  how  practi- 
cally to  employ  Fortune,  and  Andelocia,  who  lavishes  her  gifts 
in  self-indulgence  and  vice.  The  extant  version  of  Old  For- 
tunatus has  been  adapted  for  court.  This  explains  why 
Dekker  has  so  lavished  on  it  his  delicate  fancy  and  a  power 
of  poetical  expression  that  will  compare  favorably  with  the 
best  of  his  fellows  in  the  drama.  Of  several  beautiful  lyrics 
that  this  play  contains,  none  is  more  musical  than  the  song 
contrasting  Vice  with  Virtue: 

Virtue's  branches  wither.  Virtue  pines, 

O  pity,  pity,  and  alack  the  time, 
Vice  doth  flourish.  Vice  in  glory  shines, 

Her  gilded  boughs  above  the  cedar  climb. 
Vice  hath  golden  cheeks,  O  pity,  pity, 

She  in  every  land  doth  monarchize. 


174  VERNACULAR   DRAMA 

Virtue  is  exiled  from  every  city, 

Virtue  is  a  fool,  Vice  only  wise. 
O  pity,  pity,  Virtue  weeping  dies: 

Vice  laughs  to  see  her  faint;  —  alack  the  time. 
This  sinks;  with  painted  wings  the  other  flies: 

Alack  that  best  should  fall,  and  bad  should  climb. 

0  pity,  pity,  pity,  mourn,  not  sing, 
Vice  is  a  saint.  Virtue  an  underling. 
Vice  doth  flourish.  Vice  in  glory  shines, 
Virtue's  branches  wither.  Virtue  pines. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  comedy,  the  palm  of  victory  is  av^^arded 
to  Virtue,  vv^ho  now^  turns  to  the  queen  w^ith  the  w^ords: 

All  that  they  had  or  mortal  men  can  have, 
Sends  only  but  a  shadow  from  the  grave. 
Virtue  alone  still  lives,  and  lives  in  you; 

1  am  a  counterfeit,  you  are  the  true; 
I  am  a  shadow;   at  your  feet  I  fall. 
Begging  for  these,  and  these,  myself  and  all. 
All  these  that  thus  do  kneel  before  your  eyes 
Are  shadows  like  myself:   dread  Nymph,  it  lies 
In  you  to  make  us  substance. 

I  In  The  Shoemakers'  Holiday,  i6oo,  we  have,  as  typically 
las  delightfully,  the  bourgeois  spirit  of  Elizabethan  London. 
The  disguise  of  high-born  Lacy  as  a  shoemaker's  apprentice 
to  win  the  love  of  Rose  who  is  only  a  lord  mayor's  daughter; 
the  faithful  wife,  Jane,  who  foils  her  rich  and  persistent  suitor 
in  her  faith  in  the  return  of  her  cobbler  husband,  Ralph,  who 
has  been  impressed  for  the  wars;  above  all,  the  humors  of 
Simon  Eyre  among  his  journeymen  and  apprentices,  prince  as 
he  is  of  shoemakers  and  good  fellows,  with  his  elevation  to  the 
mayoralty  and  the  friendship  of  his  king  —  such  is  the  sub- 
ject-matter of  this  busy,  delightful  comedy,  borrowed  and 
bettered  as  it  is  from  one  of  the  prose  tales  of  Thomas  Deloney. 
The  Shoemakers'  Holiday  is  typical  of  one  of^  the  happiest 
groups  of  the  comedy  of  contemporary  life.  Dekker  presents 
the  life  about  him  frankly,  merrily,  and  roundly,  seeking  neither 
the  lesson  of  the  moralist  nor  the  distortion  of  him  who  scorns 
and   satirizes.     There  were  other  Elizabethan  examples   of 


DOMESTIC  DRAMAS  175 

this  type  of  comedy,  such  as  the  anonymous  Wily  Beguiled, 
Henry  Porter's  lively  Two  Angry  Women  of  Ahington,  and 
William  Haughton's  Englishmen  for  My  Money.  Shakespeare's 
Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  too,  is  of  this  type;  and  all  were  on 
the  stage  by  1598  and  hence  preceded  Dekker's  shoemakers. 
Another  favorable  specimen  of  lighter  comedy  is  The  Merry 
Devil  of  Edmonton,  1600,  which  has  been  ascribed  to  the 
authorship  of  Drayton  and  touches  the  supernatural  in  its 
introduction  of  the  English  Faustus,  Peter  Fabel.  Indeed, 
should  we  seek  for  the  roots  of  this  sort  of  play,  we  should  find 
them  deep  in  morality  times  when  the  picturing  of  familiar 
everyday  life  on  the  stage  rose  into  popularity  as  a  means  of 
enlivening  the  serious  intent  of  the  old  drama  to  teach  right 
living. 

Dekker  was  much  given  to  the  practice  of  collaboration 
and  wrote  plays  with  at  least  half  a  dozen  other  authors. 
Such  a  play  was  Patietit  Grissel,  1598,  in  which  Chettle  and 
Haughton  both  had  a  share  with  Dekker.  This  dramatizing 
of  a  medieval  story  of  the  slavishly  devoted  wife,  long  since 
told  by  Chaucer,  brings  Dekker  into  touch  —  as  does  the  story 
of  Jane  for  that  matter  in  The  Shoemakers'  Holiday  —  with 
a  long  series  of  domestic  dramas  in  which  the  virtues  of  the 
faithful  W'ife  are  set  forth  and  extolled.  This  universal  theme 
exhibits  itself  in  almost  every  conceivable  form  in  Elizabethan 
drama,  in  tragedy  as  well  as  comedy,  in  foreign  as  well  as  in 
English  setting,  now  throwing  into  contrast  the  jealous  or 
neglectful  husband  or  exacting  lover,  and  again  placing  beside 
the  faithful  wife  the  wanton  or  her  less  malignant  contrast, 
the  shrew.  Between  1602  and  1607  some  half-dozen  dramas 
combine  the  subject  of  the  faithful  wife  with  that  of  the  young 
spendthrift,  for  such  How  a  Man  May  Choose  a  Good  Wife 
from  a  Bad,  by  Joshua  Cooke,  the  anonymous  London  Prodigal, 
Wilkins'  Miseries  of  Enforced  Marriage,  and  Marston's  Dutch 
Courtizan,  their  very  titles  proclaim  them.  Of  equally  early 
origin  in  the  drama  are  the  lighter  comedies  of  this  class  which 
throw  into  prominence  the  nature  of  the  "shrew,"  beginning, 
as  they  do,  with  The  Taming  of  a  Shrew,  before  1590,  which 
Shakespeare  revised  in  his  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  later  answered 


176  VERNACULAR  DRAMA 

by  Fletcher  in  The  Woman  s  Prize  or  the  Tamer  Tamed, 
which  may  date  as  early  as  1606.  This  story  of  the  taming  of 
Petruchio  by  a  second  wife  who  followed  poor  Katherine, 
who  had  become  too  tame  to  live  long,  enjoyed  great  popularity 
in  the  reign  of  King  Charles,  when  it  was  often  acted  on  al- 
ternate nights  with  Shakespeare's  comedy.  In  The  Honest 
Whore,  printed  in  two  parts,  1604  and  1630,  Dekker  collaborat- 
ed with  Middleton.  Here  the  themes  of  the  shrew  and  the 
submissive  and  virtuous  wife  are  united  in  a  new  aspect  into 
a  serious  drama  which,  save  for  one  or  two  of  Heywood's,  rises 
well  above  the  best  of  its  class.  Here  is  told  the  story  of  a 
fallen  woman's  regeneration  by  means  of  a  passion  inspired  in 
her  by  one  who  takes  her  passing  fancy  but  withstands  her 
blandishments.  And  herein  also  is  displayed  in  vivid  realism 
her  steadfastness  in  virtue  when  temptation  returns  to  her  at 
the  hands  of  this  very  man,  and  she  is  compelled  to  endure 
want  and  ignominy  for  her  refusal  to  return  to  a  life  of  sin. 
The  figure  of  Bellafront  is  admirably  conceived  and  executed 
and  remains,  with  that  of  Signor  Frescobaldo  her  old  father, 
who  in  disguise  as  her  servant  sustains  her  in  her  struggle 
to  lead  a  virtuous  life,  the  most  effective  and  touching  piece 
of  character  drawing  in  which  Dekker  had  a  hand. 

Quotation  in  patch  and  fragment  is  always  unsatisfactory, 
but  never  more  so  than  when  it  seeks  to  suggest  the  large  lines 
of  a  finished  picture.  Frescobaldo  has  long  disowned  his  dis- 
honored daughter  and,  assuming  an  air  of  hearty  content, 
declares:  "Though  my  head  be  like  a  leek,  white,  may  not 
my  heart  be  like  the  blade,  green  .?"     He  continues: 

May  not  old  Frescobaldo,  my  Lord,  be  merry  now,  ha  .''  I  have 
a  little,  have  all  things,  have  nothing:  I  have  no  wife,  I  have  no 
child,  have  no  chick,  and  why  should  not  I  be  in  my  jocundare .? 

Hipolito.     Is  your  wife  then  departed  .? 

Fresco.  She's  an  old  dweller  in  those  high  countries:  yet  not 
from  me.    Here,  she  *s  here;  a  good  couple  are  seldom  parted. 

Hipolito.     You  had  a  daughter  too,  sir,  had  you  not  ? 

Fresco.  Oh,  my  Lord!  this  old  tree  had  one  branch,  and  but 
one  branch  growing  out  of  it:  it  was  young,  it  was  fair,  it  was  straight: 
I  pruned  it  daily,  drest  it  carefully,  kept  it  from  the  wind,  helped  it 


DOMESTIC  DRAMAS  177 

to  the  sun;  yet  for  all  my  skill  in  planting,  it  grew  crooked,  it  bore 
crabs:  I  hewed  it  down.  What  's  become  of  it,  I  neither  know  nor 
care. 

Told  that  Bellafront  is  dead,  he  cries: 

Dead!  My  last  and  best  peace  go  with  her!  I  see  Death  's  a 
good  trencherman;  he  can  eat  coarse,  homely  meat  as  well  as  the 
daintiest.     Is  she  dead  ? 

Htpoltto.     She  *s  turned  to  earth. 

Fresco.  Would  she  were  turned  to  heaven.  Umh!  Is  she  dead  .? 
I  am  glad  the  world  has  lost  one  of  his  idols  ....  In  her  grave 
sleep  all  my  shame  and  her  own:  and  all  my  sorrow  and  all  her  sin. 

Hipolito.     I  'm  glad  you  are  wax,  not  marble. 

But  later,  undeceived  and  assured  that  Bellafront  is  not  really 
dead,  but  poor,  and  her  husband,  who  had  first  betrayed  her, 
in  jail  for  the  killing  of  a  man,  Frescobaldo  breaks  out  once 
more  against  his  daughter,  declaring. 

I  am  sorry  I  wasted  tears  upon  a  harlot,  ....  I  detest  her, 
I  defy  both,  she  is  not  mine,  she  's  — 

Hipolito.     Hear  her  but  speak. 

Fresco.     I  love  no  mermaids.     I  'U  not  be  caught  with  aquail-pipe. 

Hipolito.  You  're  now  beyond  all  reason.  Is  't  dotage  to  relieve 
your  child,  being  poor  ? 

Fresco.  'T  is  foolery  to  relieve  her.  Were  her  cold  limbs  stretched 
out  upon  a  bier,  I  would  not  sell  this  dirt  under  my  nails  to  buy  her 
an  hour's  breath  nor  give  this  hair,  unless  it  were  to  choke  her. 

Hipolito.     Fare  you  well,  for  I  '11  trouble  you  no  more. 

Exit  Hipolito. 

Fresco.  And  fare  you  well,  sir.  Go  thy  ways;  we  have  few  lords 
of  thy  making  that  love  wenches  for  their  honesty.  'Las,  my  girl, 
art  thou  poor .''  Poverty  dwells  next  door  to  despair;  there  's  but  a 
wall  between  them.  Despair  is  one  of  Hell's  catchpoles;  and  lest 
that  devil  arrest  her,  I  '11  to  her.  Yet  she  shall  not  know  me.  She 
shall  drink  of  my  wealth  as  beggars  do  of  running  water,  freely,  yet 
never  know  from  what  fountain's  head  it  flows.  Shall  a  silly  bird 
pick  her  own  breast  to  nourish  her  young  ones:  and  can  a  father  see 
his  child  starve  .?    That  were  hard,  the  pelican  does  it,  and  shall  not  I  ? 

Turning  from  Dekker,  whose  other  plays  from  their 
affiliations  in  authorship  and  subject  may  be  best  considered 
elsewhere,  we  find  in  Heywood  even  a  closer  representative  in 


178  VERNACULAR  DRAMA 

the  drama  of  the  ideals  of  the  city  and  of  its  preference  for 
homely  and  domestic  subjects.  Thomas  Heywood  came  of 
Lincolnshire  and  was  both  younger  and  somewhat  better 
born  than  Dekker.  Heywood's  birth  was  about  1575.  He 
was  sometime  fellow  of  Peterhouse,  Cambridge,  and,  judged 
by  his  use  of  the  classics,  a  good  scholar.  He  became  an  actor 
about  1596,  covenanting  not  to  act  for  any  other  company 
save  Henslowe's.  He  appears,  however,  both  to  have  acted 
and  written  for  several  companies  of  players.  Heywood  was 
altogether  the  most  fertile  among  the  old  dramatists,  declar- 
ing himself  that  he  was  concerned,  in  whole  or  in  part,  with 
the  composition  of  two  hundred  and  twenty  plays.  Of  these 
some  thirty-five  alone  have  survived;  and  their  author  in- 
terested himself  as  little  as  did  Shakespeare  in  the  preser- 
vation or  publication  of  any  of  them.  Like  Dekker  and 
Middleton  ;a&T*  him,  Heywood  furnished  pageants  for  the 
city;  and  he  contributed  largely  in  his  later  years  to  pamphlet 
literature.  The  two  chronicle  plays  of  Heywood  have  already 
received  the  brief  mention  which  their  relative  merits  deserve. 
The  bias  of  Heywood's  dramatic  art  towards  domestic  drama 
is  patent  in  both  these  plays,  Edward  IV  turning  chiefly  on 
that  sovereign's  relations  to  Mistress  Jane  Shore  and  her 
unhappy  story.  If  Tou  Know  Not  Me,  lugging  in  much  bio- 
graphical matter  concerning  Sir  Thomas  Gresham  and  a 
somewhat  apocryphal  nephew  of  his  to  eke  out  the  account, 
by  way  of  obituary  in  1604,  of  "the  troubles  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth." It  is  likely  that  between  these  two  chronicle  histories 
and  about  1596,  Heywood  made  his  strange  adventure  into 
classical  story,  dramatizing  ancient  mythology  as  he  found  it  m 
Ovid,  the  Iliad,  and  elsewhere.  The  novelty  of  this  departure 
was  justified  by  its  success;  for  The  Golden,  Silver,  Brazen  and 
Iron  Ages,  as  the  published  titles  ran,  comprise  no  less  than 
five  plays  of  disjointed  and  heterogeneous  material,  astonish- 
ingly well  done  when  the  conditions  are  considered.  Another 
early  venture  of  Heywood's  links  on  to  the  heroical  dramas 
such  as  Greene's  Orlando  Furioso,  Charlemagne,  and  The 
Thracian  Wonder.     But  here,  as  in  the  histories,  the  taste  of 


"A  WOMAN    KILLED  WITH   KINDNESS"    179 

the  London  citizen  and  his  credulity  as  to  romantic  marvels 
ruled  to  produce,  in  The  Four  Prentices  of  London,  a  pre- 
posterous combination  of  knightly  adventure  with  a  glorifica- 
tion of  civic  pride.  It  was  the  absurdities  of  these  London 
"prentices,"  sons  to  "the  old  Earl  of  Bulloigne,"  and  the 
impossible  adventures  by  means  of  which  each  carved  out  for 
himself  a  kingdom,  that  Beaumont  later  ridiculed  in  his 
noteworthy  dramatic  burlesque.  The  Knight  of  the  Burning 
Pestle,  1607.  But  the  citizens  preferred  their  Prentices,  and 
Beaumont's  clever  satire  remained  to  be  appreciated  by  a 
later  and  a  more  sophisticated  generation. 

However,  the  strength  of  Heywood  lay  not  in  these  experi- 
ments. He  contributed  an  admirable  play  to  the  series  which 
contrasts  the  faithful  wife  with  the  prodigal  son  in  The  Wise 
Woman  of  Hogsdon,  doubtless  acted  about  1604.  And  if  he 
is  the  author  of  The  Fair  Maid  of  the  Exchange,  he  added,  in 
the  valiant  cripple  of  Fenchurch,  a  new  and  interesting  figure 
to  the  drama.  A  Woman  Killed  %vith  Kindness,  first  published 
in  1607,  is  Heywood's  most  distinctive  work.  In  it  tw^o 
situations  of  ordinary  domestic  life  are  interwoven  into  a  plot 
less  straggling  and  careless  than  is  usual  with  this  author.  I 
can  not  find  these  situations  so  improbable  and  contrary  to 
experience  as  some  of  late  have  found  them.  A  sister's 
honor  offered  in  barter  for  the  satisfaction  of  a  supposed  debt 
of  honor  incurred  to  an  enemy,  the  seduction  by  an  ingrate  of 
his  benefactor's  wife,  a  woman  of  seeming  sense  and  virtue, 
surely  such  are  not  situations  of  "naive  unreality."  This  last, 
indeed,  with  its  attendant  plight  of  an  honorable  man,  WTonged 
by  the  woman  he  continues  to  love  but  w^ith  feelings  chastened 
by  the  offense  which  he  abhors,  is  Heywood's  favorite  situ- 
ation. It  is  the  story  of  Jane  Shore,  her  honorable  husband, 
and  the  king  in  Edward  IV;  of  Frankford,  his  wife,  and  her 
betrayer  in  A  Woman  Killed  zuith  Kindness;  and  of  Wini- 
fred, Young  Geraldine,  and  his  faithless  friend  in  The  Eng- 
lish Traveler,  a  play  of  later  date.  In  the  supreme  scene  of 
A  Woman  Killed  with  Kindness,  when,  having  suffered  her 
paramour  to  escape,  Frankford,  the  wronged  husband,  con- 


i8o  VERNACULAR  DRAMA 

fronts  his  guilty  wife  who  has  fallen  groveling  at  his  feet,  we 

have  the  following  dialogue : 

Mistress  FrankforJ.  Oh,  by  what  word,what  title,  or  what  name, 
Shall  I  entreat  your  pardon  ?     Pardon!   oh! 
I  am  as  far  from  hoping  such  sweet  grace 
As  Lucifer  from  heaven.     To  call  you  husband  — 

0  me,  most  wretched!     I  have  lost  that  name, 

1  am  no  more  your  wife. 

Frankford.     Spare  thou  thy  tears,  for  I  will  weep  for  thee: 
And  keep  thy  countenance,  for  I  '11  blush  for  thee. 
Now  I  protest,  I  think  't  is  I  am  tainted, 
For  I  am  most  ashamed;  and  't  is  more  hard 
For  me  to  look  upon  thy  guilty  face. 
Than  on  the  sun's  clear  brow.     What  would'st  thou  speak  ? 

Mist.  Frank.     I  would  I  had  no  tongue,  no  ears,  no  eyes, 
No  apprehension,  no  capacity. 

When  do  you  spurn  me  like  a  dog  ?  when  tread  me 
Under  your  feet .''  when  drag  me  by  the  hair  ? 
Though  I  deserve  a  thousand  thousand  fold 
More  than  you  can  inflict:  yet,  once  my  husband. 
For  womanhood,  to  which  I  am  a  shame. 
Though  once  an  ornament  —  even  for  his  sake 
That  hath  redeemed  our  souls,  mark  not  my  face, 
Nor  hack  me  with  your  sword;   but  let  me  go 
Perfect  and  undeformed  to  my  tomb. 

Frank.     My  God,  with  patience  arm  me!     Rise,  nay,  rise, 

ONan!     O  Nan! 

If  neither  fear  of  shame,  regard  of  honor. 
The  blemish  of  my  house,  nor  my  dear  love 
Could  have  withheld  thee  from  so  lewd  a  fact, 
Yet  for  these  infants,  these  young  harmless  souls, 
On  whose  white  brows  thy  shame  is  charactered. 
And  grows  in  greatness  as  they  wax  in  years,  — 
Look  but  on  them,  and  melt  away  in  tears. 
Away  with  them!   lest,  as  her  spotted  body 
Hath  stained  their  names  with  stripe  of  bastardy. 
So  her  adulterous  breath  may  blast  their  spirits 
With  her  infectious  thoughts.     Away  with  them. 

Mist.  Frank.     In  this  one  life  I  die  ten  thousand  deaths. 


LESSER   PLAYS   OF  HEYWOOD  i8i 

And  the  scene  ends  with  the  husband's  solemnly  declared 
decision  to  banish  his  wife  from  his  sight  and  that  of  their 
children  forever,  and  to  leave  her,  with  every  creature  comfort 
about  her,  absolutely  an  exile  from  his  life  and  love. 

Such  was  not  the  usual  fate,  we  may  feel  sure,  of  culprits 
like  Mistress  Frankford,  who  sufficiently  declares  her  expecta- 
tion of  the  customary  brutal  justice  of  the  time.  Heywood 
was  a  novel  moralist  for  his  age  and  preached  —  shall  we  call 
them  without  offense  —  the  bourgeois  virtues  of  charity, 
restraint,  and  self-control,  alive  to  the  superior  quality  of 
human  pathos  over  mere  terror  and  revenge.  It  is  this  direct- 
ness, honesty,  and  the  homely  pathos  that  Hepvood  employs 
in  the  treatment  of  situations,  such  as  these  that  caused  that 
rare  critic  of  our  old  drama,  Charles  Lamb,  to  dub  him  with 
no  extravagance  of  phrase,  a  "prose  Shakespeare,"  and  to 
remark  on  his  utter  carelessness  as  to  the  preservation  or 
publicity  of  his  plays:  "Posterity  is  bound  to  take  care  that 
a  writer  lose  nothing  by  such  a  noble  modesty."  In  his  later 
and  lesser  plays:  in  The  Fair  Maid  of  the  JVest,  1603,  breezy 
comedy  of  adventure  that  it  is;  in  Fortune  by  Land  and  Sea, 
1607,  which  he  wrote  with  Rowley;  in  the  intrigue,  classically 
derived,  o(The  Captives  (of  doubtful  date);  even  in  the  later 
Challenge  for  Beauty  and  Royal  King  and  Loyal  Subject,  in- 
fluenced as  both  of  these  last  were  by  the  new  romantic  senti- 
mentality of  Fletcher,  we  find  ever  recurring  in  He)"^vood's 
plays  a  charming  unaffectedness  of  manner  and  a  pathos  that 
is  born  only  of  a  true  humanity  of  heart.  He^-^vood  long  sur- 
vived most  of  his  fellow-dramatists,  dying,  it  is  believed,  as 
late  as  1648. 

In  estimating  the  value  of  literary  work  such  as  that  of 
Dekker  and  Heywood,  whatever  the  demands  of  absolute 
criticism,  we  can  not  but  take  into  consideration  the  conditions 
under  which  much  of  that  work  was  done.  The  little  we  know 
of  Dekker  spells  improvidence  and  its  consequent  privation 
and  suffering.  The  bookseller,  Kirkman,  relates  of  Hey- 
wood that  he  wrote  something  every  day,  filling  at  times  the 
backs  of  tavern  bills  or  other  chance  scraps  of  paper  with 
his  notes  and  scribblings:   a  sufficient  glimpse  into  the  Bohe- 


1 82  VERNACULAR  DRAMA 

mianism  of  that  playwright's  surroundings.  Both  Heywood 
and  Dekker  Uved  for  years  in  a  kind  of  bondage  (shared  by 
many  of  their  fellows)  to  Philip  Henslowe,  pawnbroker,  man- 
ager, and  exploiter  of  the  theater;  for,  whatever  the  lack  of 
specific  proofs,  there  seems  little  reason  to  make  out  that  a 
vulgar,  illiterate  man,  who  grew  rich  on  the  labor  that  kept 
others  in  beggary,  was  really  a  beneficent  friend  to  actors 
and  playwrights  and  an  enlightened  encourager  of  the  drama. 
Fortunately  for  the  modern  historian  of  the  drama,  Henslowe 
kept  a  species  of  general  memorandum  and  account  book  in 
which  he  recorded  day  by  day  his  dealings  with  plays  and  play- 
wrights. This  work  is  known  as  Hensloive's  Diary.  It  is 
still  preserved  in  Dulwich  College  which  was  founded  by  Ed- 
ward AUeyn,  the  actor,  Henslowe's  son-in-law,  with  money 
inherited  at  least  in  part  from  Henslowe.  Henslowe^s  Diary 
has  been  published  more  than  once  and  of  late  carefully  edited 
and  annotated,^  so  that  we  have,  now  easily  at  hand,  much  in- 
formation as  to  the  theatrical  business  of  Elizabeth's  day,  at 
least  so  far  as  it  was  conducted  by  the  most  successful  and 
aggressive  of  the  rivals  of  Shakespeare. 

Henslowe's  Diary,  the  entries  of  which  lie  between  1592 
and  16 14,  contains  references  by  name  to  nearly  every  popular 
dramatist  of  his  immediate  time;  and  the  signatures  of  a  num- 
ber of  them  appear  subscribed  to  agreements,  obligations,  and 
other  papers.  Neither  Shakespeare's  name,  nor  Beaumont's, 
nor  Fletcher's,  appears  in  Henslowe;  for  the  obvious  reason, 
his  dealings  were  not  with  them.  But  aside  from  Dekker  and 
Heywood,  the  lesser  names  of  Munday,  Chettle,  Haughton, 
Hathway,  Drayton,  Wilson,  and  others  of  the  popular  school 
recur  again  and  again  in  his  pages,  attached  not  only  to  plays 
which  remain  to  disclose  the  nature  of  the  wares  in  which 
Henslowe  dealt,  but  to  many  more  which  time  has  happily 
suffered  to  perish.  Other  men,  some  of  them  among  the 
greatest  in  later  times,  began  in  apprenticeship  to  Henslowe 
and  worked  out  into  a  larger  field  and  a  greater  independence. 
Such  were  Middleton,  Chapman,  Marston,  Webster,  and  Jon- 
son,  each  one  of  whom  devised,  wrote,  and  mended  plays  for 
^  See  the  ed.  by  W.  W.  Greg,  1904-1908. 


"HENSLOWE'S  DIARY"  183 

Henslowe,  received  advances  in  earnest  for  his  promises, 
accepted  obligations,  and  was  bailed  by  him,  on  occasion,  out 
of  the  debtors'  prison.  In  the  Diary  may  be  found  memoranda 
of  Henslowe's  returns  from  the  several  theaters  —  the  Rose, 
the  Swan,  the  Fortune  and  the  playhouse  at  Newington  —  in 
which  he  was  at  various  times  interested;  his  expenditures  for 
various  companies  —  the  Earl  of  Sussex's,  Lord  Strange's, 
the  Queen's,  and  the  Admiral's  men;  his  loans  to  playwrights 
and  agreements  with  actors,  advances  of  money  to  property 
makers  and  costumers;  and  a  large  number  of  letters,  more 
or  less  concerned  with  dramatic  aifairs.  From  these  pages  we 
learn  that  a  new  play  cost  Henslowe  from  six  to  eight  pounds 
sterling,  and  that  the  price  of  plays  more  than  doubled  before 
the  end  of  his  life  in  1616.  With  due  allowance  for  the  differ- 
ence in  the  purchasing  value  of  money,  it  is  difficult  to  ima- 
gine how  the  dramatic  writers  of  the  day  contrived  to  make 
even  a  modest  living  out  of  their  vocation.  This  alone  is 
enough  to  explain  why  they  so  frequently  turned  to  acting,  to 
pamphleteering,  to  pageant  making,  and  such  patronage  as 
might  be  secured;  and  this  is  why  the  only  men  who  acquired 
a  competence  out  of  their  traffic  with  the  stage  were  Alleyn, 
Burbage,  and  Shakespeare,  each  one  of  whom  was  a  manager 
as  well  as  an  actor.  Before  we  leave  Henslowe's  Diary  one 
caution  is  necessary  to  the  unwary.  The  picture  which  this 
book  of  accounts  discloses  is  less  an  example  of  what  we  may 
assume  to  have  been  likewise  the  conditions  of  Shakespeare's 
authorship  than  a  contrast  of  those  conditions.  Henslowe 
was  a  shrewd  man  of  business  who  built  theaters  where  and 
when  they  were  wanted,  catered  to  the  taste  of  the  moment, 
and  exploited  art  and,  in  exploiting  it,  degraded  it  as  his  kind 
always  does.  The  management  of  Shakespeare's  company 
is  not  to  be  conceived  as  in  every  way  ideal.  Shakespeare  and 
Burbage,  too,  were  men  of  business;  but  each  was  possessed  of 
the  artist's  temperament  which  admits  the  existence  of  ideals 
even  if  it  does  not  always  follow,  much  less  attain  them. 
Happily  Shakespeare's  age,  with  all  its  materialism,  retained 
the  Renaissance  recognition  and  worship  of  art,  and  hence  with 
his  three  or  four  companies  and  a  score  of  poets,  with  readi- 


i84  VERNACULAR   DRAMA 

ness  to  do  anything  in  art  or  in  business  that  might  be  con- 
ceived of  as  popularly  demanded,  Henslowe  battled  for  years 
in  vain  for  leadership  over  the  Chamberlain's  men  v^^ho  em- 
ployed, besides  Shakespeare,  not  more  than  two  or  three  other 
poets,  and  enjoyed  some  eighty  per  cent  of  the  patronage  of 
the  court, 

A  long  and  forbidding  group  of  domestic  dramas  are  those 
most  simply  denominated  the  murder  plays.  They  deal, 
for  the  most  part,  w^ith  actual  tragedies  frequently  of  recent 
occurrence,  and  may  be  regarded  as  among  the  productions  of 
our  old  drama  that  performed  one  of  the  most  popular  func- 
tions of  the  modern  nev^^spaper.  A  larger  proportion  of  plays 
of  this  class  than  of  some  others  have  perished  and  there  is  no 
need  here  to  chronicle  their  forgotten  titles.  The  first  murder 
play  in  point  of  time  that  remains  extant  is  Arden  of  Fevers  ham; 
and  it  is,  by  universal  consent,  conceded  to  be  the  finest 
example  of  its  type.  Arden  was  in  print  by  1592,  and  has 
by  some  been  dated  back  to  a  time  prior  to  the  Armada.  The 
story  is  that  of  the  sordid  murder,  after  several  abortive 
attempts,  of  Arden  by  his  unfaithful  wife,  Alice,  and  her 
paramour,  a  base  serving-man  named  Mosbie.  The  source 
in  Holinshed  is  followed  with  close  fidelity,  and  little  attempt 
is  made  to  order  the  material  artfully,  much  less  to  ennoble 
the  subject  by  flights  of  poetry  or  depths  of  moralizing.  The 
force  of  the  tragedy  lies  in  its  simple  and  vivid  realism,  in  the 
unrelenting  faithfulness  with  which  the  unknown  author  has 
contrived  to  produce  an  artistic  effect  by  representing  the 
blind  infatuation  of  Arden's  wife  for  a  worthless,  menial 
coward,  and  the  weakness  and  fatalism  of  the  husband's 
own  nature,  until  inevitable  tragedy  overtakes  all.  In  its 
robust  and  vigorous  kind,  it  is  not  possible  to  find  the  equal 
among  English  plays  of  Arden  of  Feversham;  and  this  excel- 
lence has  led  to  the  opinion  —  held  by  no  less  an  authority  than 
the  late  Mr.  Swinburne  —  that  we  have  in  this  tragedy  early 
dramatic  work  of  Shakespeare's.  "Ease  and  restraint  of 
style,"  a  mastery  of  humor  and  irony,  and  a  depth  of  insight 
into  character  and  motive,  these  are  some  of  the  qualities  in- 
dubitably possessed  by  the   author  of  Arden   of  Feversham. 


THE  MURDER  PLAYS  185 

And  all  of  these  are  Shakespeare's,  if  we  judge  him  at  large 
and  especially  in  his  later  work.  But  Shakespeare  was  no 
such  master  of  these  maturer  qualities  of  his  art  in  1590;  and 
it  is  difficult  to  conceive  of  the  unrestrained  and  poetical  pen 
that  wrote  Romeo  and  'Juliet,  the  early  comedies,  and  Titus 
Andronicus  as  capable  of  disclosing  simultaneously  the  con- 
trolled, if  coarser,  art  of  Arden  of  Feversham.  Whoever  the 
author  of  this  remarkable  play,  the  suggestion  of  an  indigenous 
tragedy  of  everyday  life,  raised  to  a  grade  of  artistic  success 
and  permanence  less  by  the  graces  of  poetry  than  by  the  force 
of  uncompromising  realism,  was  not  realized  in  subsequent 
dramas  of  the  type. 

Among  minor  murder  plays  may  be  named  A  JVarning 
for  Fair  Women,  1598,  "containing  the  most  tragical  and 
lamentable  murder  of  Master  George  Sanders  of  London, 
nigh  Shooter's  Hill,  consented  unto  by  his  wife,"  and  Tiuo 
Tragedies  in  One,  1 599,  in  which  the  contemporary  killing 
of  one  Beech,  a  chandler  in  Thames  Street,  is  detailed  with  a 
crude  and  rigid  respect  for  the  letter.  A  more  important 
murder  play  is  the  one-act  Yorkshire  Tragedy,  1605,  wherein 
the  story  of  a  young  and  well-born  murderer,  named  Calverley, 
was  placed  on  the  boards  while  the  matter  was  as  yet  fresh  in 
the  memories  of  the  auditors,  and  in  a  kind  of  continuance  of 
Wilkins'  Miseries  of  Enforced  Marriage,  1 605,  a  domestic 
play  already  mentioned.  The  "Shakespearean  manner" 
discovered  by  some  in  this  brief  dramatic  sketch  is  due  doubt- 
less to  a  more  or  less  successful  imitation  of  the  superficialities 
of  the  master's  style  rather  than  to  any  closer  contact  with  him. 
It  is  fair,  however,  to  add  that  The  Yorkshire  Tragedy  was 
acted  by  the  King's  company.  But  Shakespeare  was  not 
its  only  poet.  The  later  scattering  murder  plays  of  this 
bourgeois  type  fall  beyond  the  period  with  which  this  book  is 
concerned. 

In  the  comedies  that  have  thus  far  been  described  in  this 
chapter  and  in  the  more  serious  plays,  to  a  certain  extent  as 
well,  the  attitude  of  the  author  has  been  that  of  the  simple 
chronicler  of  what  he  sees  before  him,  except  for  the  tinge  of 
romance  that  enters  into  productions  like  The  Four  Prentices 


1 86  VERNACULAR  DRAMA 

of  London y  Old  Fortunatus,  or  The  Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton. 
This  in  general  is  the  attitude  of  Heywood,  and  of  Dekker 
in  his  earlier  works.  There  is,  however,  another  and  very 
different  aspect  in  which  life  may  be  presented  successfuly 
on  the  stage,  and  that  is  the  satirical.  In  this  method  of 
presentation  the  thing  seen  is  not  nearly  so  important  as  the 
effect  to  be  produced  on  the  beholder;  the  essentials  of  life 
hold  no  such  place  as  its  conventions  and  accidental  super- 
ficialities. In  a  word,  with  the  advent  of  satire  the  drama 
becomes  conscious  Sometimes  the  satirical  dramatist  is  a 
moralist  as  we  shall  find  in  Jonson.  At  others,  as  in  Middle- 
ton,  he  stops  short  of  any  intention  to  teach  or  improve,  con- 
tent with  the  mere  transcript  of  life  in  its  comic,  contradictory, 
and  scandalous  departures  from  custom  and  convention. 

Thomas  Middleton  was  born  in  1570  and  received  his 
education  at  Cambridge  and  Gray's  Inn.  His  work,  despite 
much  coarseness,  discloses  a  better  bred  man  than  either 
Dekker  or  Heywood;  but  his  career  differs  little  from  theirs 
in  the  variety  of  his  contributions  to  the  drama,  to  civic 
pageantry,  and  to  pamphleteering.  The  earliest  plays  of 
Middleton  were  written  in  conjunction  with  Munday,  Dekker, 
or  Webster  in  the  workhouse  of  Henslowe,  and  they  comprise 
refashionings  of  older  plays  of  the  chronicle  type,  such  as 
The  Mayor  of  Queenborough,  1 597,  and  an  Entertainment  to 
King  James,  which  he  wrote  with  Dekker  in  1604.  Middle- 
ton  later  frequently  collaborated  with  William  Rowley,  and 
some  excellent  work  was  the  result.  For  the  present  we 
are  concerned  with  Middleton's  comedies  of  London  life  and 
manners  which  he  wrote,  for  the  most  part,  between  1604  and 
16 14.  These  begin  in  Michaelmas  Term  (which  equals  the 
modern  phrase,  London  in  the  season,  though  it  deals  with  a 
different  grade  of  life),  and  extend  through  A  Trick  to  Catch 
the  Old  One,  A  Mad  World  my  Masters,  Tour  Five  Gallants 
to  A  Chaste  Maid  in  Cheapside  and  No  Wit  no  Help  Like 
a  Woman's.  These  titles  are  themselves  descriptive  of  the 
subject-matter  of  these  comedies  and  this  enumeration  by 
no  means  exhausts  the  list.  In  Middleton's  comedies  recur 
again  and  again  the  young  spendthrift,  going  the  pace,  eternal 


COMEDIES  OF  MIDDLETON  187 

darling  of  those  that  dehght  in  the  theater;  the  usurious 
money-lender  whom  we  laugh  to  see  hoist  with  his  own  petard; 
uncles  and  fathers  duped,  trusting  maids  deceived  but  ever 
faithful;  braggarts  beaten;  fools  despoiled  and  abused;  and 
wit  forever  triumphant.  Middleton's  intention,  in  a  word, 
was  the  presentation  on  the  stage  of  a  witty  and  satirical  picture 
of  contemporary  London  life.  He  avoided  any  attempt  at 
romance,  such  as  Greene  and  Dekker  were  prone  to,  and  he 
escaped  the  moralist's  attitude  of  Jonson  as  well.  Middleton's 
search  was  not  for  the  charm  of  the  unusual,  and  he  had  no 
uncommon  insight  into  common  things;  nor  did  he,  on  the 
other  hand,  paint  his  world  to  show  how  wicked  it  was.  His 
words  might  have  been:  "This  is  the  London  of  my  day; 
come,  let  us  laugh  about  it";  and,  having  amused  you  with 
the  truth  as  he  saw  it,  he  has  done  all.  In  the  accomplish- 
ment of  this  result  Middleton  employed  not  only  a  discerning 
eye  and  a  wide  if  superficial  experience  in  life,  but  the  con- 
structive arts  of  a  consummate  dramatist  and  a  ready,  fluent 
style,  in  all  respects  adequate  to  his  purpose.  Middleton  is 
the  truest  of  realists,  but  he  is  commonly  disappointing;  not 
that  we  expect  poetry  here  —  it  belongs  little  to  his  subjects 
—  but  that  there  is  a  worldliness  about  him,  a  willingness  to 
extenuate  moral  turpitude  and  explain  away  moral  upright- 
ness that,  however  it  be  justified  by  human  experience  at 
times,  is  displeasing  in  art. 

This  careless,  witty,  conscienceless,  satirical  comedy 
became  the  most  prevalent  of  its  time  and  was  imitated  by 
several  of  Middleton's  contemporaries,  whose  ideas  of  life 
were  sounder  than  his  own.  Thus  Dekker  in  collaboration 
with  John  Webster  (later  to  make  so  great  a  name  in  romantic 
tragedy)  wrote,  between  1603  and  1606,  two  plays.  Westward 
Hoe  and  Northward  Hoe,  that  mark  the  very  depths  of  the 
gross  and  vicious  realism  to  which  the  comedy  of  the  day  oc- 
casionally descended:  and  lesser  imitations,  among  which 
Lodowick  Barrey's  one  comedy.  Ram  Alley,  1609,  and  Na- 
thaniel Field's  Woman  is  a  Weathercock  and  Amends  for  Ladies, 
both  161 1,  are  the  best,  followed  in  quick  succession.  Even 
when  plays  were  not  wholly  given  up  to  this  mode  of  comedy, 


1 88  VERNACULAR  DRAMA 

when  the  romantic  ruled  or  their  scene  was  translated  to 
outlandish  countries,  an  under  plot  or  episode  frequently 
maintained  the  favorite  satirical  picture  of  contemporary  man- 
ners which  no  veil  of  Italian  lawn  nor  Spanish  domino  could 
entirely  disguise. 

When  all  has  been  said,  however,  the  greatest  of  the  disci- 
ples of  Middleton  in  the  comedy  of  manners  was  John  Fletcher, 
a  dramatist  destined  to  outstrip  him  in  the  multiplicity  of  his 
gifts,  and  this  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  there  is  a  greater 
Middleton  than  the  Middleton  of  the  comedy  of  manners. 
The  best  of  Fletcher's  comedies  of  London  life,  to  which  we 
shall  return  later  in  this  book,  only  glorify,  by  means  of  a 
somewhat  finer  perception  of  its  possibilities,  the  kind  of 
drama  that  Middleton  had  rendered  by  his  talents  popular  on 
the  stage. 

But,  as  already  suggested,  Middleton's  dramatic  activity 
was  not  confined  to  comedies  of  manners.  The  earliest  play 
with  which  his  name  has  been  associated.  The  Mayor  of  Queen- 
borough,  1597,  is  a  chronicle  history  converted  into  a  romantic 
drama;  and  The  Old  Law,  1599,  a  capital  farce  on  what  in 
our  contemporary  phrase  we  denominate  "Oslerism";  Blurt, 
Master  Constable,  1601,  and  The  Phcenix,  both  have  a  like 
romantic  cast.  William  Rowley,  with  whom  Middleton  was 
associated  in  many  plays,  was  an  actor  as  well  as  a  plapvright. 
Rowley  was  likewise  the  author  of  several  pamphlets  of  the 
type  made  popular  by  Greene  and  Dekker,  among  which  A 
Search  for  Money,  1609,  descriptive  of  the  low  life  of  the  city, 
is  typical.  In  1607  we  find  Rowley  in  collaboration  with 
Day  and  Wilkins  in  the  composition  of  a  formless  production 
for  the  stage  called  The  Travails  of  Three  English  Brothers; 
and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  Rowley's  unaided  effort,  A  Shoe- 
maker a  Gentleman,  followed  within  two  or  three  years.  This 
vigorous  comedy  is,  like  The  Four  Prentices  of  Heywood,  a 
direct  appeal  to  the  bourgeois  prejudices  of  the  citizens  of 
London;  for  therein  is  told  of  the  apprenticeship  of  a  Rom^an 
prince,  Crispianus,  to  a  London  shoemaker  and  of  much  else, 
familiar  as  well  as  heroic  and  strange.  At  what  time  Rowley 
rewrote  an  earlier  play,  Uter  Pendragon,  into  The  Birth  of 


"A  FAIR  QUARREL"  189 

Merlin,  first  published  in  1662  as  "by  Shakespeare  and  Row- 
ley," it  would  be  difficult  to  say.  This  play,  like  The  ShoemakeTy 
is  far  from  devoid  of  merit,  and  though  coarse  to  an  extreme 
in  parts,  is  characterized  by  a  certain  honesty  of  purpose  and 
command  of  boisterous  humor  that  give  Rowley  his  place. 
Rowley's  greatest  drama,  the  tragedy  All 's  Lost  by  Lust, 
belongs  to  a  period  beyond  the  limits  of  this  book.  His 
association  as  a  collaborator  with  Middleton  began  about 
1614  by  the  temporary  union  of  the  companies  for  which  each 
had  been  previously  writing  and  continued  until  the  death 
of  Middleton  in  1627.  The  most  noteworthy  products  of 
this  joint  authorship.  The  Spanish  Gipsy  and  The  Changeling 
(by  all  odds  the  greatest  play  in  which  Middleton  had  a  hand), 
also  fall  beyond  us.  But  in  the  very  year  of  the  death  of 
Shakespeare  these  two  plaj^vrights  produced  A  Fair  Quarrel, 
raising  and  disposing  of  an  interesting  question  in  an  age  of 
dueling:  dare  a  man  fight  in  a  quarrel  unless  he  believes  that 
he  defends  the  truth  .?  The  Elizabethan  age  had  its  problems 
as  we  have  ours.  The  Honest  JVhore,  A  JVoman  Killed  with 
Kindness,  A  Fair  Quarrel,  are  problem  plays  in  the  Elizabethan 
sense.  This  last  is  a  fine  serious  drama  of  its  class  and  de- 
serves, in  its  virile  directness,  the  praise  that  is  evoked  from 
Charles  Lamb  in  contrast  to  "the  ins^id  levelling  morality" 
to  which  the  modern  stage  of  Lamb's  time,  if  not  of  ours,  was 
tied.  "A  Puritanical  obtuseness  of  sentiment,"  continues  the 
critic,  "a  stupid  infantile  goodness,  is  creeping  among  us 
instead  of  the  vigorous  passions,  and  virtues  clad  in  flesh  and 
blood,  with  which  the  old  dramatists  present  us.  Those 
noble  and  liberal  casuists  could  discern  in  the  differences,  the 
quarrels,  the  animosities  of  man,  a  beauty  and  truth  of  moral 
feeling,  no  less  than  in  the  iterately  inculcated  duties  of  for- 
giveness and  atonement.  .  .  .  To  know  the  boundaries  of 
honor,  to  be  judiciously  valiant,  to  have  a  temperance  which 
shall  beget  a  smoothness  in  the  angry  swellings  of  youth,  to 
esteem  life  as  nothing  when  the  sacred  reputation  of  a  parent  is 
to  be  defended,  yet  to  shake  and  tremble  under  a  pious  cow- 
ardice when  that  ark  of  an  honest  confidence  is  found  to  be 
frail  and  tottering,  to  feel  the  true  blows  of  a  real  disgrace 


190  VERNACULAR   DRAMA 

blunting  that  sword  which  the  imaginery  strokes  of  a  supposed 
false  imputation  had  put  so  keen  an  edge  upon  but  lately: 
to  do,  or  to  imagine  this  done  in  a  feigned  story,  asks  something 
more  of  a  moral  sense,  somewhat  a  greater  delicacy  of  percep- 
tion in  questions  of  right  and  wrong,  than  goes  to  the  writing 
of  two  or  three  hackneyed  sentences  about  the  laws  of  honor 
as  opposed  to  the  laws  of  the  land,  or  a  commonplace  against 
duelling."  The  main  plot  of  J  Fair  Quarrel  is  alone  enough 
to  atone  for  all  the  moral  lapses  of  Middleton's  comedies  of 
manners.  To  what  degree  the  ruder  but  more  generous  nature 
of  Rowley  was  responsible  for  the  success  of  this  excellent 
drama  we  need  not  here  inquire. 

Any  further  pursuit  of  the  comedy  of  manners  would  lead 
us  either  into  a  wider  consideration  of  Fletcher  or  into  a  con- 
trast with  the  Jonsonian  comedy  of  humors.  Both  topics 
will  be  best  treated  below.  In  the  vernacular  domestic  drama 
discussed  in  this  chapter,  whether  it  display  itself  in  the  direct 
realism  of  Dekker,  the  homely  pathos  of  Heywood,  or  the 
flippant  actualism  of  Middleton,  we  may  realize  better  than  in 
the  contemplation  of  the  drama  in  its  higher  types  how  truly 
of  the  people  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  were.  This  is  not 
where  the  poetry  and  the  ideality  of  Elizabethan  literature 
reside,  but  where  a  vigorous  part  of  its  truth  is  to  be  found: 
and  art  ceases  to  be  art  alike  when  tethered  hand  and  foot  to 
the  actualities  of  the  mundane  world  or  when  those  bonds  are 
wholly  burst  to  leave  it  a  disembodied  ghost  at  the  mercy  of 
every  unbeliever's  incredulity. 


CHAPTER  XI 

LATER  ANTHOLOGIES    AND    LYRICS   TO    BE 
SET    TO    MUSIC 

The  miscellany  made  up  of  the  work  of  several  authors 
continued  to  be  the  accepted  mode  of  publishing  lyrical  verse; 
and  in  most  cases  the  fiction  at  least  of  reluctance  on  the  part 
of  the  author  to  appear  in  print  was  sedulously  maintained. 
Brittons  Boiver  of  Delight,  1 59 1,  was  a  pirated  collection,  trad- 
ing on  the  well-known  name  of  Nicholas  Breton  and  including 
other  work  besides  his  own.  The  Phcentx'  Nest,  edited  in  1593 
by  one"R.  S.  of  the  Inner  Temple,"  whose  identity  is  unre- 
coverable, contains  much  of  the  best  poetry  of  Lodge  as  well 
as  more  of  Breton;  and  The  Passionate  Pilgrim,  1599,  is  made 
up  of  poetry  piratically  culled  from  still  more  recent  poets 
w^ho  were  attracting  the  public  eye.  It  is  in  this  last  anthology 
that  Marlowe's  "Come  live  with  me"  was  first  printed,  be- 
sides two  important  sonnets  of  Shakespeare.  And  it  was  in 
The  Passionate  Pilgrim  that  several  fine  poems  of  Richard 
Barnfield  (chief  among  them  "As  it  fell  upon  a  day")  were 
attributed  to  Shakespeare,  to  cling  to  his  name,  despite  proof 
to  the  contrary,  and  be  often  reprinted  as  his.  England's 
Helicon,  the  richest  of  Elizabethan  miscellanies,  was  published 
by  John  Bodenham,  a  general  collector  and  editor,  in  1600. 
The  poetry  that  it  gathered  belonged  to  a  somewhat  earlier 
period  than  that  of  publication,  so  that  it  really  precedes  The 
Passionate  Pilgrim  as  to  the  authors  that  it  represents.  Spen- 
ser, Sidney,  Constable,  Breton,  Lodge,  and  Peele  are  the 
familiar  names  most  frequently  recurring  in  England's  Helicon; 
and  there  is  still  about  its  many  graceful  Italianate  poems  not 
a  little  affectation  of  shepherds  and  shepherdesses.  We  may 
omit  here  more  than  a  mention  of  certain  irregular  collec- 
tions such  as  the  several  poems  on  the  theme  of  "The  Phoenix 
and  the  Turtle,"  including  work  by  Shakespeare,  Jonson, 

191 


192  LATER  ANTHOLOGIES 

Marston,  and  Chapman,  affixed  to  that  somewhat  mysterious 
publication  known  as  Chester's  Love's  Martyr,  1601;  and  mere 
gatherings  of  extracts  like  Belvedere  (later  called  The  Garden 
of  the  Muses)  and  England's  Parnassus,  both  1600.  And  it  is 
unnecessary  for  us  to  be  misled  into  confusing  the  fanciful 
titles  which  individual  poets  gave  at  times  to  their  works  — 
Munday's  Banquet  of  Dainty  Conceits  or  Breton's  Arbor  of 
Amorous  Devices  —  with  the  titles  of  true  anthologies. 

The  last  important  miscellany  of  lyrical  verse  in  Elizabeth's 
reign  is  Davison's  Poetical  Rhapsody,  published  in  1602. 
Francis  Davison  was  the  eldest  son  of  William  Davison,  Eliza- 
beth's unfortunate  privy  councilor  and  secretary  of  state  whom 
she  disgraced  for  carrying  her  warrant  for  the  execution  of 
Mary  Stuart  to  the  Council.  Francis  was  educated  at  Gray's 
Inn,  where  a  masque  of  his  was  performed  in  1594.  Davison 
and  his  father  were  adherents  of  the  Earl  of  Essex,  like  South- 
ampton, Shakespeare's  patron,  and  so  many  hopeful  younger 
spirits  of  the  time;  and  the  young  poet  lost  all  chance  of  pre- 
ferment in  consequence,  Francis  made  little  of  the  law,  and 
in  1602  turned  his  attention  to  publishing  the  poetry  he  had 
written  and  collected.  There  is  no  trace  of  him  after  i6c^, 
when  the  will  of  his  father  was  probated.  He  is  supposed. 
however,  to  have  lived  until  about  16 18.  As  to  his  Rhapsody ^ 
it  contains,  besides  his  own  poetry  (which  is  distinguished  for 
its  erotic  fervor  and  directness),  that  of  his  two  brothers,  some 
of  Sir  John  Davies,  of  Donne,  Sylvester,  translator  of  Du 
Bartas,  of  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  Thomas  Campion,'  and  much 
anonymous  verse.  The  Poetical  Rhapsody  is  full  of  sonnets 
and  madrigals  and  represents  poetry,  mostly  written  at  least 
a  dozen  years  later  than  that  contained  in  England's  Helicon. 
A  dozen  years  meant  much  in  this  age  of  peculiar  literary 
quickening.  Altogether  this  collection  most  fittingly  opens 
a  new  period. 

We  have  already  traced  in  brief  the  history  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan lyric  and  found  it  flourishing  successively  in  pastoral 
form  and  in  the  sonnet.  We  have  seen  how  general  was  the 
lyrical  gift,  how  varied  the  nature  of  the  poetry  of  this  type, 
and  how  it  was  governed,  in  the  main,  by  that  sensuous  delight 


ELIZABETHAN  MUSIC  193 

in  the  beauty  of  the  visible  world  that  is  the  distinctive  artistic 
note  of  the  Renaissance.  Upon  the  wavering  of  the  sonnet 
fashion  the  attention  of  lyrists  was  directed  chiefly  to  the  writ- 
ing of  songs  to  be  set  to  music.  To  these  as  they  occur  first 
in  the  song-books  of  the  time  and  secondly  in  the  dramas  we 
now  turn. 

The  early  skill  and  prominence  of  the  English  in  music 
has  long  been  recognized.  Indeed,  the  earliest  period  of 
modern  music,  that  extending  from  1400  to  the  uprise  of 
Italian  music  with  Palestrina  in  the  latter  half  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  has  been  designated  by  historians  of  music  as  the 
English  period.  Within  this  time  the  Flemings  alone  could 
hold  their  own  with  English  musicians  and  composers,  and 
it  was  not  until  Italian  influence  on  literature  had  reached  full 
flood  that  the  corresponding  influence  in  the  sister  art  became 
at  all  important.  From  early  times,  too,  in  England  the 
essential  unity  of  poetry  and  song  had  received  recognition. 
The  poet  and  the  musician  frequently  united  in  the  same  per- 
son, as  in  the  case  of  King  Henry  VIII,  to  descend  to  no  meaner 
example.  Moreover,  not  only  were  poems  of  a  distinctly 
lyrical  nature  habitually  set  to  music,  but  narrative  verses  and 
ballads,  often  of  considerable  length,  were  actually  sung.  As 
to  some  of  his  lyrical  Posies,  Gascoigne  remarks  on  the  margin, 
"these  have  very  sweet  notes  adapted  unto  them,  the  which 
I  would  you  should  enjoy  as  well  as  myself."  Robert  South- 
well, the  Jesuit  father,  proposed  that  his  fervid  religious 
poetry  be  sung;  and  so  late  as  1622,  Patrick  Hannay,  a  very 
obscure  poetling,  furnished  the  music  for  the  first  stanza  of 
his  poem,  Philomela,  with  the  unabashed  intent  that  the  re- 
maining ninety  or  more  stanzas  be  sung  to  the  same  tune. 

The  cultivation  of  music  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth 
was  universal.  To  play  neither  the  lute  nor  the  cithern,  to 
prove  unequal,  whether  young  man  or  woman,  to  bearing  your 
part  at  sight  singing  or  to  "running  a  discant,"  as  the  freer 
song  was  called,  was  to  raise  question  of  your  nurture  and 
gentle  training.  The  very  carters  and  tinkers  caroled  at  their 
trades;  and  the  weavers  became  proverbial  for  the  excellence 
of  their  singing.     Elizabeth  prided  herself  on  her  technical 


V  £     194  LYRICS   SET  TO  MUSIC 

skill  on  the  virginal,  and  was  regaled  when  she  dined  in  state 
£  ^  with  kettle-drum  and  trumpets.  The  establishment  of  the 
*&"  "f^  royal  chapel  was  a  considerable  one,  no  less  than  sixty  voices 
being  at  times  maintained  therein  at  the  royal  expense.  The 
queen  is  said  to  have  expended  more  than  a  thousand  pounds 
a  year  in  the  maintenance  of  the  royal  music;  and  positions, 
such  as  those  that  we  have  already  seen  men  like  Edwards  and 
Hunnis  occupying,  were  of  dignity  and  of  no  small  emolument. 
The  Elizabethan  musician  was  a  man  of  very  special  training. 
Even  a  mere  lutenist  was  often  a  university-bred  man,  and 
no  one  could  pretend  to  posts  of  importance  in  connection  with 
the  queen's  service,  sacred  or  secular,  who  was  not  a  doctor 
of  music  of  Oxford  or  Cambridge.  The  modern  musician 
who  lives  only  by  his  dexterity  of  voice  or  skill  on  some  one 
instrument  appears  to  have  been  little  known  to  the  time. 
Where  known  at  all,  he  was  placed  in  the  category  of  masters 
of  fencing  or  dancing.  By  the  term  musician,  in  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth,  a  creative  artist  and  composer  was  understood. 

The  Elizabethan  song-book  commonly  supplied  both  music 
and  words,  and  was  printed  either  in  separate  parts  of  alto, 
basso,  and  so  forth,  or  these  parts  were  so  arranged  on  the  page 
that  three  or  four  singers  might  sit  on  opposite  sides  of  a  table 
and  sing  each  his  own  part.  The  sacred  song-book  was  of 
course  made  up  of  hymns;  the  secular,  usually  of  madrigals 
and  aiis.  These  terms  had  very  definite  meanings  which  we 
have  lost  in  modern  times.  By  a  madrigal,  in  music,  was 
meant  a  polyphonic  piece  for  several  voices  without  accom- 
V  paniment;  while  an  ajr  was  acccompanied  and,  whether  written 
for  one  voice,  or  for  several,  was  not  in  counterpoint.  As  a 
form  of  poetry,  the  Elizabethan  madrigal  is  a  poem  of  lyrical 
or  epigrammatic  nature,  integral  like  the  sonnet,  that  is,  not 
composed  of  a  succession  of  like  stanzas.  The  madrigal, 
metrically,  is  often  made  up  of  a  system  of  tercets,  followed 
by  a  couplet  or  more;  but  none  of  these  features  are  constant. 
In  length  the  madrigal  ranges  from  half  a  dozen  verses  to 
sixteen  or  even  occasionally  more;  and  the  meter  varies  for 
the  most  part  independently  of  the  rimes,  and  in  verses  of 
differing  lengths,  most  commonly  lines  of  five  and  of  three 


THE  MADRIGAL  195 

stresses.  Lastly,  a  preference  is  shown  for  feminine  or  double 
rimes  over  single  ones,  a  trait  derived  from  the  madrigal's 
Italian  original  and  referable  to  the  English  attempt  to  repro- 
duce syllable  for  syllable  for  the  meter's  sake.  A  perfect  little 
madrigal  in  nearly  all  the  conditions  of  the  species  as  well  as 
in  grace  and  in  epigrammatic  point  is  this,  entitled  "In  Praise 
of  Two,"  from  Davison's  Poetical  Rhapsody,  the  author  un- 
known. 

Faustina  hath  the  fairer  face. 

And  Phyllida  the  feater  grace; 
Both  have  mine  eye  enriched: 

This  sings  full  sweetly  with  her  voice; 

Her  fingers  make  as  sweet  a  noise: 
Both  have  mine  ear  bewitched. 

Ah  me!   sith  Fates  have  so  provided, 

My  heart,  alas,  must  be  divided. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  composers,  with  the  sudden 
popularity  of  madrigal  singing,  held  with  any  degree  of  strict- 
ness in  this  matter  of  words,  to  any  such  rules  as  these  of  their 
Italian  originals.  The  line  between  a  short  poem  of  nearly 
any  meter  and  a  madrigal  was  soon  obliterated,  and  the  quat- 
rain and  couplet  asserted  themselves  (as  in  the  sonnet)  as 
the  arrangements  of  rime  peculiarly  English.  A  responsible 
collection  of  English  Madrigals  in  the  Time  of  Shakespeare  ^ 
discloses  that  the  musicians  of  the  age  set  everything  to  the 
fashionable  part  song:  pastorals  and  experiments  in  foreign 
versification  by  Sidney,  songs  of  Jonson's  masques  and  of 
Shakespeare's  plays,  an  occasional  sonnet  of  lighter  sentiment, 
and  even  several  stanzas  of  The  Faery  Queen. 

As  to  the  introduction  of  the  madrigal  into  England,  it  is 
related  that  the  Earl  of  Arundel,  visiting  Italy  in  1568,  "em- 
ployed Tar\iso,  an  Italian  musician,  to  compose  a  set  for  him. 
The  word  "madrigal,"  however,  seems  not  to  have  been  em- 
ployed until  the  first  song-book  of  the  type,Musa  Transalpina, 
collected  by  Nicholas  Yonge,  a  London  merchant,  trading  to 
Italy  and  enthusiastically  fond  of  music.  Musa  Transalpina 
was   published   by  William   Byrd   in    1588.      In   his   preface 

*By  F.  A.  Cox,  1899;  see  pp.  13,  14. 


196  LYRICS   SET  TO  MUSIC 

Yonge  writes:  "I  endeavored  to  get  into  my  hands  all  such 
English  songs  as  were  praiseworthy,  and  amongst  others  I  had 
the  hap  to  find  in  the  hands  of  some  of  my  good  friends  certain 
Italian  madrigals  translated  most  of  them  five  years  ago  by 
a  gentleman  for  his  private  delight."  Two  years  later  Thomas 
Watson,  the  lyrist,  published  The  First  Set  of  Italian  Madrigals 
"Englished  not  to  the  sense  of  the  original  ditty,  but  after  the 
affection  of  the  note."  This  statement  of  the  title  should  dis- 
pose of  the  notion  that  Watson,  who  showed  himself  expert 
enough  in  Italian  elsewhere,  was  ignorant  or  careless  of  his 
sources.  He  was  after  words  that  would  set  to  the  music 
whether  sung  in  English  or  in  the  original.  It  is  of  interest  to 
note  that  Watson's  book  was  strictly  contemporary,  drawing 
on  but  four  collections  of  Italian  madrigals,  none  of  them  dat- 
ing earlier  than  1580. 

From  this  point  onward  song-book  after  song-book  issued 
from  the  press.  A  list  of  books  of  this  kind,  appearing  be- 
tween the  time  of  the  Armada  and  1630,  contains  no  less  than 
ninety  items,  and  discloses  an  equal  number  of  composers. 
Sixty-sixof  these  publications  appeared  between  1595  and  1615; 
and  fifty,  between  1600  and  the  year  of  Shakespeare's  death. 
Hence  the  inference  that  the  vogue  of  the  song  followed  that 
of  the  sonnet,  as  the  sonnet  had  followed  the  pastoral  mode  in 
popular  estimation. 

In  turning  to  a  consideration  of  those  who  were  responsible 
for  these  song-books,  we  find,  as  a  rule,  only  the  names  of  the 
writers  of  the  music  given;  at  times  it  may  be  suspected  that 
the  name  on  the  title-page  is  little  more  than  that  of  the  pub- 
lisher or  collector.  For  example,  William  Byrd,  described  as 
"the  central  musical  figure  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  celebrated 
early  and  living  late,"  enjoyed  for  some  years  the  monopoly 
of  music  publishing  which  he  sold  later  or  shared  with  Thomas 
Est  and  Thomas  Morley.  Byrd  was  certainly  no  more  than 
the  publisher  of  Musa  Transalpina;  but  he  was  likewise  a 
composer  of  note,  as  his  Psalms,  Sonnets  and  Songs,  1588, 
Songs  of  Sundry  Natures,  1 589,  and  several  other  collections 
attest.  Once  more,  we  have  seen  how  the  madrigal  writers 
in  their  search  for  words  set  anything  that  they  could  lay  theit 


ELIZABETHAN  SONG-BOOKS  197 

hands  on  to  music.  But  when  the  song-books  are  examined, 
they  disclose,  nevertheless,  a  large  proportion  of  lyrics,  in- 
capable of  identification  in  the  works  of  known  poets,  a  matter 
that  gives  rise  to  the  question  how  far  the  composers  of  the 
day  may  have  been  their  own  poets.  On  this  point  Mr. 
Bullen  (who  of  all  can  best  speak  for  the  Elizabethan  lyric)  is 
of  opinion  that  "as  a  rule  composers  are  responsible  only  for 
the  music";  while  Mr.  Davey,  author  of  an  excellent  History 
of  Music,  says:  "It  appears  to  me  that,  as  a  rule,  the  poems 
and  the  music  were  simultaneously  conceived;  I  ground  this 
belief  on  the  detailed  parallelism  in  the  matter  of  the  successive 
stanzas  in  the  airs  through  which  the  same  music  fits  them 
all."  A  better  argument  might  be  founded  on  the  uniformity 
of  poetical  style  which  at  times  accompanies  the  musical  work 
of  the  same  composer.  Although,  as  to  this,  it  has  been 
affirmed  that  all  the  words  of  Morley's  First  Book  of  Ballets, 
1595,  are  from  the  pen  of  Michael  Drayton.  In  the  works  of 
the  greatest  man  of  this  class,  Thomas  Campion,  at  least,  we 
are  certain  that  the  two  arts  were  fittingly  and  indissolubly 
wedded.  And  for  this  we  may  cite  his  own  words  "to  the 
reader"  prefixed  to  his  Third  Book  of  Airs:  "In  these  English 
airs  I  have  chiefly  aimed  to  couple  my  words  and  notes  lovingly 
together;  which  will  be  much  for  him  to  do  that  hath  not 
power  over  both." 

Among  the  several  musicians  who  may  thus  not  impro- 
perly be  entitled  to  a  place  in  the  choir  of  Elizabethan  lyrists, 
may  be  named  John  Wilbye,  author  of  two  sets  of  Madrigals 
in  1598  and  1609,  and  famed  as  "the  greatest  of  English  mad- 
rigalian  composers";  Thomas  Morley,  the  prolific  author  of 
no  less  than  seven  like  works  between  his  Canzonets  of  1593 
and  his  First  Book  of  Airs,  1600;  and  John  Dowland,  the 
celebrated  lutenist,  author  of  four  books  oi  Airs  before  1601. 
On  the  other  hand  these  musicians  often  set  the  poetry  of  others 
to  music.  Thus  Morley's  First  Book  contains  the  original 
setting  of  Shakespeare's  "It  was  a  lover  and  his  lass.  And 
the  songs  which  Richard  Johnson  composed  for  The  Tempest 
are  published  in  Cheerful  Airs  and  Ballads,  1 660.  The  memory 
of  Dowland,  likewise,  has  been  associated  with  Shakespeare 


198  LYRICS  SET  TO  MUSIC 

because  of  the  fine  sonnet,  "In  praise  of  music  and  sweet 
poetry,"  attributed  by  Jaggard,  a  piratical  publisher,  to  the 
great  dramatist  and  commonly  republished  since  as  his,  though 
it  is  really  Barnfield's.  Dowland  carried  the  fame  of  English 
musicians  to  the  continent  and  was  for  years  lutenist  to  the 
king  of  Denmark  and  to  other  great  people  abroad. 

Other  names  of  madrigalists  there  are:  Orlando  Gibbons, 
organist  of  Canterbury  Cathedral;  Philip  Rossiter,  associated 
with  Campion  and  not  without  a  place  in  the  history  of  the 
drama;  Thomas  Weelkes,  of  whom  we  know  little;  Robert 
Jones,  of  whom  we  know  nothing.  Of  Tobias  Hume,  we  are 
only  certain  that  he  was  a  captain.  The  quality  of  the  poetry  in 
the  song-books  of  these  men  occasionally  reaches  rare  heights 
and  lyric  perfection.  More  commonly  it  rises  little  above  the 
general  level  of  the  Elizabethan  lyric.  Take  this  one  perfect 
stanza  from  Tobias  Hume's  First  Part  of  Airs,  French,  Polish 
and  Others  Together,  1605,  which  Mr.  Bullen  picked  out  for 
the  text,  so  to  speak,  of  one  of  his  collections  of  lyrics: 

0  love!  they  wrong  thee  much 
That  say  thy  sweet  is  bitter, 

When  thy  rich  fruit  is  such 

As  nothing  can  be  sweeter; 
Fair  house  of  joy  and  bliss, 
Where  truest  pleasure  is, 

I  do  adore  thee: 

1  know  thee  what  thou  art, 
I  serve  thee  with  my  heart. 

And  fall  before  thee. 

Quite  as  perfect  for  the  music  of  their  words  are  lines  such  as 
these:  from  The  Muses'  Garden  of  Delights,  collected  in  1601 
by  Robert  Jones: 

The  sea  hath  many  thousand  sands. 

The  sun  hath  motes  as  many. 
The  sky  is  full  of  stars,  and  love 

As  full  of  woe  as  any: 
Believe  me  that  do  know  the  elf 
And  make  no  trial  for  thyself; 


THOMAS  CAMPION  199 

or  these  lines,  half  whimsical  yet  deeply  serious,  from  the  same 
choice  collection: 

How  many  new  years  have  grown  old 
Since  first  thy  servant  old  was  new! 
How  many  long  hours  have  I  told 

Since  first  my  love  was  vowed  to  you! 
And  yet,  alas!   she  doth  not  know 
Whether  her  servant  love  or  no. 

But  w^hen  all  has  been  said,  in  Thomas  Campion  we  reach 
the  prince  of  this  tuneful  realm  of  Elizabethan  song.  That 
so  delightful  a  minor  poet  should  have  needed  rediscovery 
towards  the  end  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  a  matter  all  but 
inexplicable,  for  Campion's  reputation  was  commensurate 
with  his  talents  in  his  own  age.  The  date  of  his  birth  is  un- 
certain. He  was  educated  at  Cambridge  and  Gray's  Inn, 
and  published  Latin  Epigrams  as  early  as  1594-  His  song- 
books  were  printed  between  the  years  1601  and  1619.  In  1602 
appeared  his  Observations  in  the  Art  of  English  Poesy,  in  which 
he  attacked  "the  vulgar  and  inartistic  custom  of  riming"  and 
attempted  to  prove  that  English  metrical  composition  was 
faulty  in  not  following  the  classics.  Campion  was  ably  an- 
swered in  the  next  year  by  Daniel,  who  expressed  his  wonder 
that  such  an  attack  should  proceed  from  one  whose  "com- 
mendable rimes,  albeit  now  himself  an  enemy  to  rime,  have 
given  to  the  world  the  best  notice  of  his  worth."  Later  in  life 
Campion  became  a  distinguished  practitioner  of  medicine, 
and  held,  as  well,  an  honorable  place  among  contemporary 
musicians,  alike  for  his  compositions  and  for  his  excellent 
treatise,  A  New  Way  to  Make  Four  Parts  in  Counterpoint, 
published  in  1613.  Although  a  conservative  in  theory  as  to 
versification.  Campion  was  remarkably  liberal  as  to  music 
and  wrote  airs  in  preference  to  madrigals  of  set  purpose.  He 
says:  "What epigrams  are  in  poetry,  the  same  are  airs  in  music; 
then  in  their  chief  perfection  when  they  are  short  and  well 
seasoned." 

The  inspiration  of  Campion  is  more  directly  classical  than  ::i 
that  of  almost  any  lyrist  of  his  immediate  time.     Campion's 
limpidity  of  diction,  his  choice  placing  and  selection  of  words, 


200  LYRICS  SET  TO  MUSIC 

his  perfect  taste  and  melody,  and  his  devotion  to  love,  all  are 
qualities  which  disclose  how  steeped  he  was  In  the  poetry  of 
Tibullus  and  Catullus.  Unlike  most  of  his  fellow  lyrists, 
Campion  was  practically  uninfluenced  by  the  contemporary 
poetry  of  Italy  and  France;  at  least  his  name  appears  not  in 
the  black  lists  of  pilferers  and  plagiarists  from  these  literatures 
in  which  our  contemporary  doctors'  theses  so  revel  and  delight. 
But  Campion's  originality  is  not  entirely  confined  to  his  aptness 
of  expression.  He  keeps  constantly  before  him  his  idea  of  the 
epigrammatic  quality  of  such  verse  as  he  regards  fit  to  set  to 
airs.     Take  for  example  the  following: 

Thou  art  not  fair,  for  all  thy  red  and  white. 

For  all  those  rosy  ornaments  in  thee; 
Thou  art  not  sweet,  though  made  of  mere  delight, 

Nor  fair  nor  sweet,  unless  thou  pity  me. 
I  will  not  sooth  thy  fancies:   thou  shalt  prove 
That  beauty  is  no  beauty  without  love. 

Yet  love  not  me,  nor  seek  thou  to  allure 

My  thoughts  with  beauty,  were  it  more  divine. 

Thy  smiles  and  kisses  I  can  not  endure, 

I  '11  not  be  wrapt  up  in  those  arms  of  thine: 

Now  show  it,  if  thou  be  a  woman  right,  — 

Embrace,  and  kiss,  and  love  me  in  despite. 

The  turn  here  at  the  end  almost  equals  that  of  the  much  praised 
sonnet  of  Drayton,  "Since  there's  no  help."  Another  dis- 
tinguishing quality  of  Campion  is  the  ease  and  ductility,  so  to 
speak,  of  his  verse.  What  he  does,  he  does  so  readily  that  it 
hardly  seems  difficult. 

Come,  cheerful  day,  part  of  my  life  to  me: 

For  while  thou  view'st  me  with  thy  fading  light. 

Part  of  my  life  doth  still  depart  with  thee. 
And  I  still  onward  haste  to  my  last  night. 

Time's  fatal  wings  forever  forward  fly: 

So  every  day  we  live  a  day  we  die. 

Here  not  a  word  is  inverted,  unusual  or  turned  to  the  slightest 
figurative  use,  and  yet  the  effect  is  perfect  of  its  kind.  Cam- 
pion, as  this  stanza  suggests,  was  not  quite  wholly  an  amorist. 


SONGS  OF  THE   DRAMA  201 

Among  his  poems  will  be  found  no  inconsiderable  number 
possessed  by  a  simple  and  quiet  religious  fervor;  for  the  fash- 
ion of  the  song-book,  like  that  of  the  sonnet  and  other  lyrical 
poetry,  included  divine  as  well  as  secular  themes. 

That  the  drama  should  have  contained  songs  is  as  natural 
as  that  the  drama  should  have  contained  comedy;  and  the 
origin  of  song  and  comedy  is  in  the  English  drama  referable 
to  much  the  same  conditions,  chief  among  them  a  desire  to 
amuse.  If  we  turn  back  as  far  as  the  moralities  and  interludes 
we  shall  find  the  few  snatches  of  song,  there  indicated,  com- 
monly put  into  the  mouth  of  the  roisterer,  the  vice,  or  the  devil; 
though  godly  songs  are  not  altogether  wanting.  The  earliest^ 
regular  comedies  are  full  of  songs:  there  are  some  half-dozen 
in  Ralph  Roister  Doister,  which  the  excellent  old  school-master, 
Nicholas  Udall,  never  found  in  his  master  Plautus;  all  are 
sprightly,  though  of  little  value  from  a  literary  point  of  view. 
Gammer  Gurtons  Needle,  the  other  "earliest  comedy,"  con- 
tains one  famous  bacchanal  song,  "Back  and  side  go  bare,  go 
bare,"  which  alone  is  enough  to  immortalize  that  rude  old 
play.  For  genuine  spirit  and  for  the  vividness  of  the  medieval 
tavern  scene  which  it  suggests,  this  song  deserves  a  place  be- 
side "The  Jolly  Beggars"  of  Burns.  In  the  tragedies  and  the 
earlier  histories  there  was  little  opportunity  for  the  introduction 
of  songs;  though  there  is  at  least  one  in  Peek's  David  and 
Bethsahe  of  merit.  Marlowe  has  none  in  his  plays,  and  Greene 
lavished  his  lyrical  gift  upon  his  pamphlets.  So  far  as  we 
know,  the  earliest  English  dramatist  of  note  to  appreciate  to 
the  full  the  value  of  the  incidental  lyric  in  the  drama  and  to 
raise  that  species  of  song-writing  to  an  art  was  John  Lyly. 
Epigrammatic  though  the  songs  of  the  Euphuist  are,  they  de- 
serve an  honorable  place  in  the  poetry  of  their  time;  though 
we  may  share  in  the  late  Mr.  Henley's  doubt  if  such  poetry  be 
lyrical.  Recall  Lyly's  best  known  song,  "Cupid  and  my 
Campaspe  played  at  cards  for  kisses,"  and  we  can  see  how 
artificial  and  witty  this  art  of  epigram  really  is.  Then  read 
one  of  the  few  exquisite  lyrics  of  Thomas  Dekker,  nearly  all 
of  them  contributed  to  plays,  and  we  recognize  the  difference. 
If  asked  to  name  one  lyric  and  one  only  which  should  illustrate 


202  LYRICS   SET  TO  MUSIC 

to  the  full  the  music,  the  sincerity,  and  the  spontaneity  of  Eliz- 
abethan poetry,  I  should  choose  neither  the  profound  depth 
of  a  Shakespearean  sonnet  nor  the  pastoral  sweetness  of  Breton 
or  Greene,  the  haughty  insolent  vein  of  Raleigh  nor  the  su- 
premely original  and  at  times  contorted  thought  of  Donne; 
but  Dekker's  dainty  lyrical  sigh  on  "  Sweet  Content " 

Art  thou  poor,  yet  hast  thou  golden  slumbers  ? 

O  sweet  content! 
Art  thou  rich,  yet  is  thy  mind  perplexed  ? 

O  punishment! 
Dost  thou  laugh  to  see  how  fools  are  vexed 
To  add  to  golden  numbers,  golden  numbers  ? 
O  sweet  content!     O  sweet,  O  sweet  content! 

Work  apace,  apace,  apace,  apace; 

Honest  labor  bears  a  lovely  face; 
Then  hey  nonny  nonny,  hey  nonny  nonny! 

Can'st  drink  the  waters  of  the  crisped  spring  ? 

O  sweet  content! 
Swimm'st  thou  in  wealth,  yet  sink'st  in  thine  own  tears  ? 

O  punishment! 
Then  he  that  patiently  want's  burden  bears 
No  burden  bears,  but  is  a  king,  a  king! 
O  sweet  content!     O  sweet,  O  sweet  content! 
Work  apace,  apace,  apace,  apace; 
Honest  labor  bears  a  lovely  face; 
Then  hey  nonny  nonny,  hey  nonny  nonny! 

Almost  equally  beautiful  though  less  musical  is  Dekker's 
grave  lyric,  "O  sorrow,  sorrow,  say  where  dost  thou  dwell," 
the  more  especially  when  we  remember  how  the  author  spent 
his  days  in  unremittent  drudgery,  a  slave  to  pawn-broking  old 
Henslowe,  always  in  poverty  and  often  in  the  debtor's  prison. 
There  is  something  inexpressibly  touching  in  the  thought  of 
such  a  man  singing  of  sweet  content,  and  of  the  inequality  of 
fortune, the  withering  of  virtue's  fair  branches,  and  the  dwelling- 
place  of  sorrow.  If  it  is  the  man  beneath  that  is  precious  in 
literature,  we  can  spare  many  sweet  sonnets  and  gay  courtly 
fopperies  for  a  few  poems  such  as  these.  Closely  allied  to 
Dekker  in  spirit  is  Nash,  the  writer  of  even  fewer  lyrics.     It 


THE  SONGS  OF  SHAKESPEARE  203 

is  in  Summer  s  Last  Will,  Nash's  one  drama,  that  we  find  his 
lyrics,  "Fading  Summer"  and  "Death's  Summons."  These 
two  poems  assume  to  us  a  new  and  terrible  import  when  we 
remember  the  grim  and  horrible  visitant  which  was  London's 
every  few  years,  the  plague.  This  play  was  written  in  a  plague 
year  and  the  refrain  of  "Death's  Summons"  consists  of  the 
very  words  of  the  official  inscription,  "Lord  have  mercy  on 
us,"  which,  with  a  cross,  was  affixed  to  the  doors  of  what 
were  called  "visited  houses." 

The  wider  popularity  on  which  the  contemporary  drama 
was  based  as  compared  with  the  choicer  art  of  the  musical 
composers  results  in  the  circumstance  that  lyrics  incidental 
to  plays  are  far  less  the  reflection  of  foreign  models.  The 
latter,  however,  reflect  passing  fashions  in  English  poetry  with 
much  faithfulness.  The  songs  of  Lyly  and  Peele  are  full  of 
the  pastoral  and  classical  spirit  preceding  1590.  Shakespeare's 
earliest-  comedies  exhibit  the  same  tendency.  The  two 
gentlemen  of  Verona  were,  neither  of  them,  shepherds,  but  a 
pretty  song  of  that  play  asks: 

Who  is  Sylvia  ?  what  is  she 

That  all  our  swains  commend  her  ? 

The  succeeding  sonnet  humor  is  well  illustrated  in  Loves 
Labor  's  Lost,  although  none  of  the  sonnets  of  that  play  are  used 
for  songs.  The  sonnet  does  not  ordinarily  set  well  to  music, 
as  the  decasyllabic  line  is  rather  long  for  the  average  song- 
phrase,  and  the  integral  form  cannot  be  split  into  short  stanzas. 
None  the  less  sonnets  have  been  so  set.  Some  of  Campion's 
airs  have  words  in  this  form. 

The  songs  of  Shakespeare  are  scattered  through  his  plays 
and  are  of  a  lyrical  beauty  and  variety  which  it  is  impossible 
to  overpraise.  More  than  twenty  of  them  have  been  trans- 
mitted to  us  with  music  actually  or  traditionally  known  to 
have  been  used  within  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries; 
and  this  number  is  materially  raised  by  the  circumstance  that 
several  of  them  exist  in  more  than  one  contemporary  version. 
Within  the  range  of  Shakespeare's  own  life  Thomas  Morley, 
Richard  Johnson,  Robert  Jones,  John  Wilson,  and  other  com- 


204  LYRICS   SET  TO  MUSIC 

posers,  unknown,  set  songs  to  music  in  Js  Tou  Like  It,  Much 
Ado  About  Nothing,  Twelfth  Night,  The  Winter  s  Tale,  The 
Tempest  and  other  plays;  whilst  some  of  the  poems  of  The 
Passionate  Pilgrim  were  set  by  Thomas  Weelkes  and  anony- 
mous composers.  As  might  be  expected  a  large  number  of 
these  songs  must  have  been  sung  to  melodies  already  well 
known.  Whether  some  of  them  were  set  before  the  perform- 
ance of  the  play  and  thus  added  to  its  attraction,  or  after,  be- 
cause of  the  popularity  of  the  words,  we  can  not  say.  The 
traditional  tunes  which  have  been  handed  down  for  generations 
have  been  more  or  less  modernized  in  the  process;  but  many 
of  them  contain  enough  of  their  probable  original  to  support 
their  claims.  With  the  beautiful  and  to  us  old-fashioned  set- 
tings of  Shakespeare's  songs  by  Dr.  Purcell,  by  Hilton,  Ban- 
nister, and  others,  in  the  generations  after  Shakespeare's 
death,  we  are  not  here  concerned. 

If  the  body  of  lyrics  incidental  to  plays  and  masques  be 
compared  with  an  equal  amount  of  lyrical  verse  of  the  period 
from  Lyly  to  Ford,  the  dramatists  will  be  found  to  hold  their 
own  in  variety  and  originality  of  subject,  in  diversity  and 
adaptability  of  meter,  and  to  possess  above  all  their  contem- 
poraries —  not  even  excepting  Campion  and  his  group  —  the 
power  of  making  words  sing.  Here  as  in  everything  that  he 
touched  Shakespeare  is  the  greatest.  There  are  no  lyrics  like 
his,  from  dainty  little  ditties  such  as  "It  was  a  lover  and  his 
lass"  or  the  fairy  music  of  Puck  and  Ariel,  to  the  exquisite 
"Dirge"  of  Cymbeline:  "Fear  no  more  the  heat  o'  the  sun." 
If  you  are  visited  by  doubts  as  to  whether  so  ethereal  a  thing  as 
you  suppose  a  lyric  to  be,  can  be  made  to  present  a  scene  of 
homely  realism  and  yet  preserve  its  quality  as  a  lyric,  read  the 
song,  "When  icicles  hang  by  the  wall,"  with  which  Love's  La- 
bor 's  Lost  closes,  and  your  doubts  will  be  forever  laid  to  rest. 
If  you  can  withstand  the  gross  temptations  of  "Back  and  side 
go  bare,  go  bare,"  be  careful  not  to  get  some  of  Shakespeare's 
lilting  bacchanal  rimes  into  your  head,  lest  you  fall  into  an 
undue  appreciation  of  "cakes  and  ale." 

All  of  the  predecessors  of  Shakespeare  were  accomplished 
metrists  and  the   diversity  and  inventiveness  of  their  lyrical 


THE  SONGS  OF  SHAKESPEARE  205 

measures  remain  the  admiration  and  delight  of  those  who  read 
their  exquisite  poetry.  But  here,  too,  as  elsewhere,  regal 
Shakespeare  comes  into  his  own,  wielding  an  imperious  scepter 
over  all  and  claiming  alike  the  vassalage  of  classical  experi- 
ment, Italian  importation,  and  sterling  old  English  freedom 
in  verse.  It  was  Shakespeare  who  could  manage  the  ripple 
of  the  redundant  syllable  and  the  contretemps  of  the  substituted 
trochee.  He  compassed  the  mystery  of  that  most  difficult  of 
English  meters,  trochaic  octosyllables  and,  with  the  solitary 
exception  of  Campion,  is  the  only  Elizabethan  lyrist  who 
essayed  the  effect  of  a  change  within  the  stanza  from  one  to 
another  metrical  system.  The  beautiful  dirge  of  Twelfth 
Night  is  a  much-quoted  example  of  the  kind  in  which  the 
anapests  slow  down  into  iambics  towards  the  close  of  each 
stanza: 

Come  away,  come  away,  death, 
And  in  sad  cypress  let  me  be  laid; 

Fly  away,  fly  away,  breath, 
I  am  slain  by  a  fair  cruel  maid. 

My  shroud  of  white,  stuck  all  with  yew, 
O  prepare  it! 

My  part  of  death,  no  one  so  true 
Did  share  it. 

Equally  felicitous  is  the  change  to  the  refrain  of  the  famous 
song  of  As  Tou  Like  It: 

Who  doth  ambition  shun, 

And  loves  to  live  i*  the  sun, 

Seeking  the  food  he  eats. 

And  pleased  with  what  he  gets, 
Come  hither,  come  hither,  come  hither: 

Here  shall  he  see 

No  enemy 
But  winter  and  rough  weather. 

With  respect  to  choice  and  treatment  of  material,  the  lyrists 
of  the  age  fall  into  three  groups:  those  that  modeled  their 
work  either  on  foreign  or  English  literary  models,  the  bookish 
poets,  analogous  to  the  bookish  dramatist^;  those  who,  setting 


2o6  LYRICS  SET  TO  MUSIC 

great  store  on  originality,  gave  to  the  world  their  own,  such 
as  it  was;  and  those  who  based  their  art  on  popular  taste, 
tradition,  story,  and  balladry.  Shakespeare  belongs  to  the 
last  of  these  groups.  Many  of  his  songs  are  bits  of  folk-poetry, 
crystallized  into  permanent  artistic  form  by  the  interposition 
of  the  poet's  genius.  The  universality  of  that  genius  is  more 
largely  due  to  the  trait  which  makes  Shakespeare,  in  drama 
and  lyric,  the  artistic  form-giver  to  the  popular  spirit  of  his 
race,  than  to  any  other  one  thing.  The  man  who  seeks  to 
raise  popular  appreciation  to  a  standard  which  he  has  taken 
beyond  his  age,  has  the  sheer  weight  of  the  world  to  move 
without  a  fulcrum.  The  man  who  rides  on  the  crest  of  a  wave 
of  popular  advance  or  popular  emotion  receives  his  own  im- 
petus from  that  wave  and,  like  the  very  spirit  of  the  storm, 
may  come  to  lead  whither  he  will.  The  dramatic  require- 
ments of  certain  situations  demanded  the  singing  of  familiar 
tunes,  even  if  the  words  were  somewhat  adapted.  Such  are 
the  songs  of  the  distraught  Ophelia,  and  the  grave-digger's 
in  the  same  play,  the  "ballads"  of  Autolycus  and  the  catches 
of  Sir  Toby  and  Sir  Andrew  Aguecheek.  In  plays  such  as 
A  Midsummer-Night's  Dream  and  The  Tempest  there  was 
opportunity  for  greater  originality.  From  the  earliest  times 
an  ability  to  sing  must  have  been  an  essential  of  the  actor's 
profession.  In  the  boy-companies  everybody  could  sing,  for 
that  was  the  chorister's  first  duty.  We  may  infer  that  the- 
atrical music  in  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  was  of  a  far  higher 
general  grade  than  now,  both  in  its  originality  and  in  the  ex- 
cellence of  its  performance. 

Excepting  Shakespeare,  the  two  greatest  lyrists  of  this 
class  are  Fletcher  and  Ben  Jonson.  Fletcher  learned  his 
lyrical  as  he  learned  his  dramatic  art  of  Shakespeare;  and  in 
his  songs  has  caught  much  of  the  Shakespearean  lightness 
and  winged  delicacy.  He  displays  the  same  facile  grace  and 
ease  of  expression,  the  same  mastery  of  effect  combined  with 
a  complete  absence  of  effort  that  form  distinctive  traits  of  his 
dramatic  works.  Shakespeare  need  not  have  been  ashamed 
of  this  dirge  from  The  Maid's  Tragedy: 


SONGS  OF  FLETCHER  AND  OTHERS       207 

Lay  a  garland  on  my  hearse 

Of  the  dismal  yew; 
Maidens,  willow  branches  bear; 

Say,  I  died  true. 

My  love  was  false,  but  I  was  firm 

From  my  hour  of  birth; 
Upon  my  buried  body  lie 

Lightly,  gentle  earth; 

nor  of  the  fine  song  in  The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen,  and  many 
others.  Fletcher,  and  more  especially  Beaumont,  begin  to 
show  a  satirical  and  cynical  strain  in  the  lyric  which  was  not 
common  to  the  earlier  age.     When  Beaumont  sings: 

Never  more  will  I  protest 
To  love  a  woman  but  in  jest: 
For  as  they  cannot  be  true. 
So  to  give  each  man  his  due 
When  the  wooing  fit  is  past. 
Their  affection  cannot  last; 

we  may  be  sure  that  he  has  come  under  an  influence  not  to  be 
found  in  the  earlier  lyrists,  and  matchable  only  in  Donne  in 
one  of  his  most  characteristic  moods. 

Save  for  a  few  well-known  poems  of  the  very  best  lyrical 
quality,  Jonson's  lyrics  contributed  to  dramas  and  especially 
to  the  masques  lose  much  by  excision  from  their  context;  and 
yet  his  masques  are  full  of  beautiful  poetry  of  this  kind  in 
which  the  classicality  of  his  style,  his  love  of  form  and  genuine 
originality  all  show  themselves  to  advantage.  Discussion 
of  the  poetry  of  Jonson  may  best  be  deferred  for  the  treatment 
of  it  in  its  larger  aspects.  In  the  masques,  too,  of  Daniel, 
Campion  of  course,  and  of  minor  writers  may  be  found  many 
beautiful  songs  which  the  art  of  contemporary  musicians  ren- 
dered acceptable  to  the  refined  and  fastidious  taste  of  the  courts 
of  Queen  Elizabeth  and  King  James. 

Returning  to  the  more  popular  drama,  Heywood  wrote 
many  songs,  some  of  rare  excellence,  such  as  "Pack  clouds 
away"  in  Lucrece,  and  "Ye  little  birds  that  sit  and  sing"  from 


2o8  LYRICS  SET  TO  MUSIC 

The  Fair  Maid  of  the  Exchange.  There  is  a  freshness  and 
genuine  love  of  nature  in  Heywood  that  saves  his  lyrics  from 
the  effect  of  artifice  which  belongs  to  some  of  the  best  work 
of  more  polished  poets.  Heywood  is  also  responsible  for  many 
mock-songs,  as  they  were  called;  they  do  not  add  to  his  fame, 
but  they  enjoyed  great  popularity  in  their  day.  Among  the 
other  great  dramatists.  Chapman  and  Marston  alone  are 
devoid  of  song.  Chapman  because,  like  Spenser,  he  needed 
a  larger  vehicle  in  which  to  convey  his  poetical  freight;  Mar- 
ston, possibly  because  the  lyric  vein  was  not  in  him.  Middle- 
ton's  songs  are,  the  best  of  them,  of  incantation,  as  in  The 
Witch,  or  of  the  mock  type.  Lastly,  Webster,  our  master-poet 
in  the  domain  of  the  terrible,  has  left  us  at  least  one  lyric  which 
deserves  a  place  with  Shakespeare's  best.  That  is  his  im- 
mortal dirge  from  Vittoria  Coromhona,  with  which  this  chapter 
may  fittingly  close: 

Call  for  the  robin-redbreast  and  the  wren, 

Since  o'er  shady  groves  they  hover, 

And  with  leaves  and  flowers  do  cover 
The  friendless  bodies  of  unburied  men. 
Call  unto  his  funeral  dole 
The  ant,  the  field-mouse,  and  the  mole, 
To  rear  him  hillocks  that  shall  keep  him  warm, 
And,  when  gay  tombs  are  robbed,  sustain  no  harm; 
But  keep  the  wolf  far  thence,  that 's  foe  to  men. 
For  with  his  nails  he  11  dig  them  up  again. 

It  is  of  this  poem  that  Charles  Lamb  wrote :  "  I  never  saw  any- 
thing like  this  funeral  dirge,  except  the  ditty  which  reminds 
Ferdinand  of  his  drowned  father  in  The  Tempest.  As  that  is 
of  the  water,  watery;  so  this  is  of  the  earth,  earthy.  Both 
have  that  intenseness  of  feeling,  which  seems  to  resolve  itself 
into  the  element  which  it  contemplates." 


CHAPTER  XII 

EPIC,    NARRATIVE,   AND  PASTORAL  VERSE 

SAVE  for  the  broken  torso  of  that  beautiful  triumph  of 
romantic  art  and  mingled  medieval  allegory,  The  Faery 
Queen,  the  age  of  Elizabeth  produced  no  great  epic;  and  even 
The  Faery  Queen  fulfils  the  conditions  of  a  w^orld  epic  only 
partially,  as  its  inspirations,  Jerusalem  Delivered  and  Orlando 
Furioso,  fulfil  them,  and  belongs,  with  all  its  merits,  its  charm, 
and  its  luxuriance  of  beauty,  to  its  age  and  not  with  the  Iliad, 
the  Divina  Comedia,  and  Paradise  Lost  to  all  time.  But 
however  the  epic,  defined  in  its  strictness,  may  have  fallen 
short  in  the  dramatic  and  lyrical  age  that  gave  the  world  Shake- 
speare's plays  and  his  sonnets,  narrative  poetry  in  the  wider 
sense  was  neither  neglected  nor  unpopular. 

In  the  first  chapter  of  this  book  our  subject  was  the  litera- 
ture of  fact,  that  extraordinary  literary  outburst  that  followed 
on  the  rebirth  of  national  consciousness,  an  outburst  which 
reached  its  height  with  the  repulse  of  the  Armada  and  fell  off 
into  mere  echoes  of  the  sonorous  past  in  the  reign  of  King 
James.  This  literature  was  couched  not  alone  in  prose  chron- 
icles and  historical  dramas  but  from  the  very  first  was  wont  to 
find  an  almost  equally  popular  expression  in  narrative  verse. 
The  Mirror  for  Magistrates,  that  strange  composite,  the  work 
of  some  fifteen  authors  and  the  growth  of  fifty  years,  is 
elegiac  rather  than  narrative,  reminiscent  of  the  fates  of  fallen 
princes  rather  than  descriptive  of  their  actual  careers;  and 
yet  The  Mirror  begot  a  numerous  progeny.  Except  for 
Churchyard's  narrative  of  Shore's  fVife,  the  first  historical 
poem  modeled  on  the  separate  "legends,"  as  they  were  called, 
of  The  Mirror  for  Magistrates  was  The  Complaint  of  Rosa- 
mund which  Daniel  published  in  1592.  Samuel  Daniel  was 
a  Taunton  man,  the  son  of  a  music-master.  He  received  his 
education,   as   we   have    seen,   at    Oxford,  leaving,  however, 

209 


210        NARRATIVE  AND  PASTORAL  VERSE 

before  receiving  his  degree.  He  became  a  tutor  to  the  Herberts 
and  other  noble  families  and  doubtless  traveled  in  this  capacity 
into  Italy  w^hence  he  brought  back  the  Italianate  practice  of 
sonneteering.  He  w^as  of  the  Sidneian  circle,  and  later  of 
Queen  Anne  of  Denmark's  household;  and  he  was  early 
encouraged  by  the  friendship  and  praise,  in  his  Colin  Clout,  of 
Spenser  himself.  Even  Nash  approved  Daniel's  Rosamund, 
which  the  author  soon  republished  "augmented."  Like  its 
models  in  The  Mirror,  The  Complaint  of  Rosamund  is  elegiac 
in  character  and  full  of  moralizing  of  no  very  original  kind. 
But  it  is  gracefully  and  we'll  written  as  is  all  Daniel's  poetry. 
In  the  next  year  no  less  than  five  poems  of  this  sort  appeared, 
treating,  besides  other  topics,  of  the  well-known  historical 
figures  of  Robert  of  Normandy,  Piers  Gaveston,  and  Richard 
II,  the  work  of  men  like  Lodge,  Drayton,  and  Giles  Fletcher. 
The  composition  of  such  poems  continues  far  into  the  reign 
of  King  James  in  the  works  of  obscure  as  well  as  of  better 
known  writers  and  in  poems  discoursing  of  Queen  Matilda, 
Owen  Tudor,  and  Queen  Katherine,  of  Edward  IV  and  his 
courtship  of  Lady  Gray,  of  the  Lollard,  Oldcastle,  of  Hum- 
phrey of  Gloucester,  and  above  all  in  the  favorite  theme  of 
the  age,  the  rise  and  fall  of  Richard  III  and  "the  preserva- 
tion of  King  Henry  VII." 

But  Daniel  had  long  since  attempted  more  ambitious  his- 
torical poetry  than  this.  In  1595  first  appeared  his  Civil 
Wars,  enlarged  to  eight  books  in  the  final  edition  of  1609. 
The  History  of  the  Civil  Wars  details,  in  an  easy  and  graceful 
stanza  of  eight  riming  lines,  the  principal  events  in  the  history 
of  England  from  the  misrule  of  Richard  II  to  the  marriage 
of  Edward  IV,  thus  covering  the  same  ground  as  Shakespeare's 
Richard  II,  the  two  plays  on  Henry  IV,  that  on  Henry  V,  and 
the  three  on  Henry  VI.  It  was  Daniel's  purpose  to  complete 
his  epic  up  to  the  accession  of  Henry  VII,  the  first  Tudor  king. 
But  as  the  work  lagged  on,  despite  its  popularity,  into  the 
reign  of  King  James,  there  was  no  reason  to  carry  out  the 
original  plan.  Daniel  ambitiously  took  for  his  model  no  less 
a  work  than  the  Pharsalia  of  Lucan;  and  it  can  not  be  denied 
that  the  English  poet  is  animated  throughout  by  a  true  pa- 


HISTORICAL   POEMS  OF  DRAYTON        211 

triotism  of  heart  and  a  fine  sustaining  faith  in  the  greatness  of 
his  country.  But  the  Wars  of  the  Roses  offer  no  such  theme 
as  the  struggles  of  Pompey  and  Caesar;  nor  was  Daniel  a 
match  for  the  clever  Roman.  The  Civil  Wars  is  not  without 
grace  and  merit  as  a  poem;  but  with  all  his  rhetoric  and  sedu- 
lous deliberation,  Daniel  never  reaches  a  true  epic  height,  and 
the  rapid  changes  from  one  to  another  historical  figure  and 
episode  are  destructive  of  the  least  semblance  of  unity. 

This  want  Daniel's  rival  in  the  historical  epic,  Michael 
Drayton,  sought  to  supply  by  taking  Roger  Mortimer  for  the 
hero  of  his  poem,  entitled  on  its  first  appearance  in  1596 
Mortimeriados,  later,  on  its  completion  and  rewriting  in 
ottava  rima  in  1603,  The  Barons'  Wars.  Drayton's  is  an 
abler  poem  than  Daniel's.  Its  characters,  Edward  II,  Isa- 
bella, and  Mortimer,  are  those  already  immortalized  in  Mar- 
lowe's fine  drama  on  that  unfortunate  monarch.  Drayton 
maintains,  too,  throughout  an  heroic  pitch,  alike  in  the  events 
of  war  and  statecraft  and  in  the  passionate  love  of  his  hero  for 
Queen  Isabella.  This  was  not  Drayton's  first  attempt  at 
historical  verse,  as  his  Legend  of  Piers  Gaveston  had  been 
printed  in  1593.  In  1597  Drayton  essayed  another  variety 
of  historical  poetry.  England's  Heroical  Epistles  is  a  series 
of  imaginary  letters  in  couplets,  supposedly  exchanged  between 
royal  and  other  historical  lovers;  and,  though  from  its  plan 
wanting  in  anything  like  real  unity,  is  characterized  by  much 
dignity  and  beauty.  In  1607  Drayton  published  his  Legend 
of  the  Great  Cromwell  in  a  volume  with  the  "legends"  of 
Queen  Matilda  and  Robert,  Duke  of  Normandy,  already  written 
some  years  since.  Though  incessantly  adapting  his  poetry 
to  changed  conditions,  remodeling  it,  and  revising,  Drayton 
continued  remarkably  constant  to  early  influences.  His 
latest  work  in  the  "historical  legend"  by  no  means  betters 
The  Barons'  Wars.  And  yet  the  finest  single  literary  expres- 
sion of  Elizabethan  national  spirit  found  utterance  in  a  poem 
of  Michael  Drayton.  But  this  is  not  his  tedious  narrative  of 
The  Battle  of  Agmcourt,  which  he  published  late  in  the  reign 
of  King  James  when  the  martial  fire  that  had  animated  Eliza- 
bethan England  had  long  since  faded  into  a  memory,  but  in  a 


4 


212        NARRATIVE  AND   PASTORAL  VERSE 

single  lyric  that  first  saw  the  light  in  the  Poems  of  1605  and 
which  Drayton  included  among  his  "Odes,"  and  quaintly 
addressed  "To  my  friends  the  Cambro-Britons  and  their 
Harp,  his  Ballad  of  Agincourt." 

Fair  stood  the  wind  for  France, 
When  we  our  sails  advance, 
And  now  to  prove  our  chance 

Longer  not  tarry, 
But  put  unto  the  main. 
At  Caux,  the  mouth  of  Seine, 
With  all  his  warlike  train, 

Landed  King  Harry. 

And,  turning  to  his  men 
Quoth  famous  Henry  then, 
"Though  they  to  one  be  ten. 

Be  not  amazed; 
Yet  have  we  well  begun. 
Battles  so  bravely  won 
Evermore  to  the  sun 

By  fame  are  raised." 

And  ready  to  be  gone. 
Armor  on  armor  shone. 
Drum  unto  drum  did  groan. 

To  hear  was  wonder; 
That  with  the  cries  they  make 
The  very  earth  did  shake. 
Trumpet  to  trumpet  spake. 

Thunder  to  thunder. 

The  very  tread  of  armies  rings  in  lines  like  these,  and  later 
poets,  in  feebler  ages  than  Drayton's,  have  not  disdained  to 
borrow  both  ideas  and  meter  of  the  patriotic  Elizabethan. 
As  to  the  man,  Michael  Drayton  was  born  in  Warwick- 
shire in  1563.  He  apparently  went  to  neither  university, 
but  was  educated  in  the  household  of  Sir  Henry  Goodere  and 
enjoyed  the  patronage  of  Lucy,  Countess  of  Bedford,  one  of  the 
most  liberal  and  universal  patrons  of  poets  and  learned  men 
of  her  day.     To  her  he  dedicated  his  Mortimeriados,  although 


WARNER'S  "ALBION'S   ENGLAND"  213 

he  characteristically  withdrew  this  dedication  on  revision. 
Drayton  began  the  cultivation  of  poetry  in  early  youth  and 
remained  throughout  a  long  life  more  undividedly  attached 
to  his  art  than  almost  any  man  among  his  contemporaries. 
Aside  from  a  trivial  attempt  in  1590,  called  The  Harmony  of 
the  Church,  Drayton's  first  publication  was  a  series  of  nine 
eclogues,  closely  following  the  manner  of  Spenser,  to  which 
he  gave  the  title  Idea,  the  Shepherd's  Garland,  in  1593.  This 
word  "Idea"  he  transferred  to  the  title  of  his  series  of  son- 
nets. Idea 's  Mirror,  in  the  following  year,  not  without  a 
reference  (if  precisians  will  have  it  so)  to  a  contemporary 
French  title  which  has  been  already  noticed.  Of  these  sonnets 
and  their  writing  we  have  already  sufficiently  heard  in  this 
book,  and  his  later  pastorals,  the  Polyolbion,  and  other  works 
will  claim  our  later  attention.  Drayton  lived  on  to  1631 
highly  honored  and  intimate,  as  we  know  from  two  or  three 
anecdotes,  with  his  fellow  country  man,  Shakespeare.  Dray- 
ton received  the  honor  of  burial  in  Westminster  Abbey. 

We  are  apt  to  forget,  if  the  number  of  editions  of  a  man's 
work  be  any  criterion,  that  next  to  Spenser  Drayton,  and 
then  Daniel,  enjoyed  the  greatest  contemporary  reputation 
as  general  poets  during  the  lifetime  of  Shakespeare.  But  we 
must  recall  that  besides  these,  their  epic  labors,  both  were 
notable  lyrists  and  both  dabbled  in  the  drama, —  Daniel  with 
Senecan  tragedies  and  exotic  pastorals,  Drayton  on  the  pop- 
ular stage  in  Henslowe's  mart,  concealing  his  traffic  with 
the  stage  in  later  time  and  feeling  with  Shakespeare  the  degra- 
dation  of  making  himself  a  motley  to  the  view  of  groundlings 
and  common  fellows. 

A  third  notable  historical  epic  of  the  time  was  William 
Warner's  Albion  s  England.  Warner,  who  was  a  London 
attorney,  wrote  earlier  than  either  Daniel  or  Drayton,  his 
book  appearing  in  1586;  and  he  is  remarkable  even  at  that 
date  for  his  imperviousness  to  contemporary  influences.  Like 
Southwell,  though  in  a  very  diff'erent  field,  Warner  wrote  in 
the  manner  of  Gascoigne,  Googe,  and  Turberville  long  after 
those  earlier  worthies  were  dead,  employing  habitually  the 
long  fourteeners  for  his  epic  verse.     Albion  s  England  is  an 


214        NARRATIVE  AND   PASTORAL  VERSE 

episodic  narrative  poem  professing  for  its  general  theme  the 
history  of  England  from  "the  division  of  the  world  after  the 
flood  to  the  coming  of  the  Normans."  It  is  full  of  incident 
and  digression,  and  it  may  be  suspected  was  more  prized  at 
times  for  its  romantic  stories  —  such  as  that  of  Argentile 
and  Curan  —  than  for  its  "history."  Albioti's  England  en- 
joyed, none  the  less,  an  immediate  and  deserved  popularity 
from  its  patriotic  sentiment  and  its  homely  and  unpretentious 
style.  Warner  continued  his  chronicle  to  the  accession  of 
Queen  Elizabeth  in  the  edition  of  1592;  and  a  final,  sixth, 
edition  was  printed  in  16 12  after  the  author's  death,  still 
further  enlarged  to  include  some  of  the  events  of  the  reign  of 
James.  In  1604  an  unsuccessful  variation  on  the  rimed 
chronicle  was  attempted  by  Sir  William  Harbert,  in  his 
Prophecy  of  Cadwallader,  "containing  a  comparison  of  the 
English  Kings  with  many  worthy  Romans,  from  William 
Rufus  to  Henry  V."  This  work  has  more  merit  than  has 
usually  been  accorded  it.  Thomas  Deloney's  Crown  Garland 
of  Roses,  1 6 13,  is  a  collection  of  ballads  on  stories  derived  from 
English  history,  and  of  no  particular  merit.  A  further  de- 
generation of  historical  verse  is  represented  in  scattered  broad- 
sides and  ballads  of  which  it  is  unnecessary  here  to  speak. 
Taylor,  "the  Water  Poet's"  illustrated  doggeral  chronicle  of 
English  kings  represents  the  final  absorption  of  this  sort  of 
verse  chronicling:  and  Taylor  falls  without  our  period. 

Another  group  of  narrative  poems,  distinctively  of  the 
Renaissance,  and  many  of  them  of  exquisite  beauty,  are  those 
which  describe,  and  in  describing,  extol  the  ecstasies  of  earthly 
love.  The  age  was  franker  in  its  speech  and  art  than  we, 
and  dared  openly  to  admire  not  only  the  cold  and  chiseled 
beauties  of  the  Venus  de  Milo,  but  likewise  the  warm  flesh 
tints  of  the  same  goddess  of  beauty  as  depicted  by  the  florid 
brush  of  Correggio.  Marlowe,  translator  of  the  Amoves  of 
Ovid  when  a  lad  at  college,  at  a  time  when  he  should  have  been 
engaged  with  more  modest  classics,  was  the  first  among  the 
greater  English  poets  thus  to  celebrate  the  glories  of  corporal 
passion.  In  this  Marlowe  stands  in  striking  contrast  with 
Spenser  who,  as  the   poet  of  chivalry,  finds  in   restraint  of 


MARLOWE'S  "HERO  AND  LEANDER"        215 

passion  and  in  a  service  devoted  to  beauty,  his  ideal  of  true 
love,  as  he  finds  in  the  metaphyscial  discussions  of  the  Pla- 
tonic philosophy,  love's  truest  expression.  Marlowe's  Hero 
and  Leander  is  really  an  amplification  of  a  classical  poem 
attributed  to  Musaeus.  It  was  first  printed  in  1598  as  a  frag- 
ment, and  appeared  later  in  the  same  year,  completed  by  the 
strenuous  hand  of  George  Chapman.  This  lovers'  tale  of 
Hero  and  Leander  is  a  poem  of  rich  and  varied  beauty  and 
finer  in  theme  than  either  Venus  and  Adonis  or  Lucrece. 
Sensuousness  is  the  note  of  Marlowe  as  it  is  of  Keats;  and 
reticence  was  not  a  quality  of  Elizabethan  times.  But  this 
is  not  the  only  characteristic  of  Marlowe's  part  in  Hero  and 
Leander.  Marlowe's  diction  flows  with  limpid  clearness;  his 
imagery  is  exquisite  and  the  story,  in  its  simple  outspokenness, 
as  spontaneous  and  natural  as  the  loves  of  Romeo  and  Juliet^ 
themselves.  Whether  for  its  descriptive  energy  and  eloquence 
or  for  its  vivid  and  highly  poetical  portrayal  of  the  effects  of 
absorbing  youthful  passion  on  man  and  maid,  Hero  and  Lean- 
der must  remain  one  of  the  most  astonishing  poems  in  the 
language.  In  this  passage  we  have  Marlowe's  ease,  limpid- 
ity, and  suflftciency  of  phrase.  His  music,  in  its  larger  ca- 
dence, and  the  full  glory  and  color  of  his  poetical  style  must  be 
sought  in  the  poem  itself. 

On  this  feast-day  —  O  cursed  day  and  hour!  — 

Went  Hero  thorough  Sestos,  from  her  tower 

To  Venus'  temple,  where  unhappily, 

As  after  chanc'd,  they  did  each  other  spy. 

So  fair  a  church  as  this  had  Venus  none: 

The  walls  were  of  discolor'd  jasper-stone. 

Wherein  was  Proteus  carved;   and  overhead 

A  lively  vine  of  green  sea-agate  spread. 

Where  by  one  hand  light-headed  Bacchus  hung, 

And  with  the  other  wine  from  grapes  out-wrung. 

And  in  the  midst  a  silver  altar  stood: 
There  Hero,  sacrificing  turtles*  blood, 
Veiled  to  the  ground,  veiling  her  eyelids  close; 
And  modestly  they  opened  as  she  rose: 


2i6        NARRATIVE  AND   PASTORAL  VERSE 

Thence  flew  Love's  arrow  with  the  golden  head; 

And  thus  Leander  was  enamoured. 

Stone-still  he  stood,  and  evermore  he  gazed, 

Till  with  the  fire,  that  from  his  countenance  blaz'd, 

Relenting  Hero's  gentle  heart  was  strook: 

Such  force  and  virtue  hath  an  amorous  look. 

It  lies  not  in  our  power  to  love  or  hate, 

For  will  in  us  is  overruled  by  fate. 

When  two  are  stript,  long  ere  the  course  begin, 

We  wish  that  one  would  lose,  the  other  win, 

And  one  especially  do  we  affect, 

Of  two  gold  ingots,  like  in  each  respect: 

The  reason  no  man  knows;   let  it  suffice. 

What  we  behold  is  censured  by  our  eyes. 

When  both  deliberate,  the  love  is  slight: 

Whoever  loved  that  loved  not  at  first  sight  ? 

Chapman's  continuation  which  takes  up  the  story  from  the 
moment  of  the  height  of  the  lovers'  joy,  is  no  unworthy  one; 
though  we  miss,  in  his  full  and  sometimes  difficult  and  labored 
lines,  the  clear  sweetness  of  the  earlier  poet. 

The  next  poem  of  this  type,  if  indeed  it  may  not  have  pre- 
ceded Marlowe's,  is  Thomas  Lodge's  Glaucus  and  Scilla  in 
the  story  of  which  a  nymph  courts  an  unwilling  swain  much 
as  Venus  courts  Adonis  in  Shakespeare's  poem,  and  with 
words  and  imagery  of  a  honied  sweetness  that  match  the  earliest 
Shakespearean  manner.  When  we  note  that  the  meter  of 
the  two  poems  is  also  the  same  (a  stanza  of  six  lines,  the  first 
four  alternately  riming,  the  last  two  a  couplet),  and  further 
recall  how  invariably  in  all  his  work  Shakespeare  followed 
whither  others  led,  the  conclusion  is  complete  that  Lodge's 
poem  was  the  model  of  Shakespeare's.  Venus  and  Adonis  is 
termed  in  the  dedication  to  his  patron,  the  Earl  of  Southamp- 
ton, "the  first  heir  of  his  increase,"  and  its  erotic  uncontrol 
confirms  the  statement.  The  poem  was  printed  in  1593,  the 
year  of  Marlowe's  death,  and  enjoyed  an  immediate  repute, 
running  through  seven  editions  before  the  conclusion  of  Eliza- 
beth's reign.  Nor  was  The  Rape  of  Lucrece,  which  appeared 
in  1594,  much  less  popular,  although  the  theme  is  more  serious 
and  its  treatment  more   dramatic  and  earnest.     Neither  of 


SHAKESPEARE'S  NARRATIVE   POEMS        217 

these  love  tales  is  frivolous  in  Shakespeare's  hands  The 
one,  as  it  has  been  described,  is,  "of  the  innocence  of  early 
manhood  that  is  proof  against  the  blandishments  of  Venus; 
the  other  of  the  innocence  of  womanhood,  outraged  by  man's 
lust,  and  choosing  death  to  set  the  pure  soul  free  from  the 
prison  of  a  tainted  body."  Coleridge  dilated  on  the  promise 
and  immaturity  of  these  two  poems  of  Shakespeare.  The 
latter  quality  needs  no  illustration;  their  promise  Coleridge 
finds  in  the  consummate  sweetness  of  their  versification  and 
the  remoteness  of  their  subject-matter  from  the  poet's  own 
life  and  emotions;  for  it  is  the  second-rate  man,  not  the  truly 
great,  who  thrusts  forward  his  own  experiences  and  emotions 
to  the  uninterested  gaze  of  strangers.  Coleridcre  likewise 
found  here  that  minute  and  faithful  imagery  which  is  every- 
where Shakespeare's  and,  in  Lucrece,  a  full  promise  of  that 
true  philosophy  of  life  that  enables  Shakespeare  so  invariably 
to  see  things  in  large,  so  little  unsteadied  by  the  unessentials 
that  surround  them.  In  Coleridge's  own  words,"  Shakespeare 
possessed  the  chief,  if  not  every,  requisite  of  a  poet, —  deep 
feeling  and  exquisite  sense  of  beauty,  both  as  exhibited  to  the 
eye  in  the  combinations  of  form,  and  to  the  ear  in  sweet  and 
appropriate  melody;  that  these  feelings  were  under  the  com- 
mand of  his  own  will;  that  in  his  very  first  productions  he 
projected  his  mind  out  of  his  own  particular  being,  and  felt, 
and  made  others  feel,  on  subjects  no  way  connected  with  him- 
self, except  by  force  of  contemplation  and  that  sublime  faculty 
by  which  a  great  mind  becomes  that  on  which  it  meditates. 
To  this  must  be  added  that  affectionate  love  of  nature  and 
natural  objects,  without  which  no  man  could  have  observed 
so  steadily,  or  painted  so  truly  and  passionately,  the  very 
minutest  beauties  of  the  external  world." 

Of  the  other  poems  of  this  class  it  is  not  needful  to  say 
much.  Marston  the  dramatist's  first  work.  The  Metamor- 
phosis of  Ptgmalion's  Image,  1 598,  deserved  the  order  of  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  that  it  be  burned  wherever  found, 
and  Marston's  subsequent  excuse  that  he  wrote  it  to  turn 
ridicule  on  amatory  poetry  is  a  piece  of  Marstonian  imperti- 
nence.    Salmacis  and  H ermaphroditus ,  1602,  has  been  attrib- 


21 8       NARRATIVE  AND  PASTORAL  VERSE 

uted  to  Francis  Beaumont,  but  is  unworthy  alike  of  his  taste 
and  his  genius.  For  its  exquisite  lusciousness  Britain's  Ida, 
which  treats  of  the  loves  of  Venus  and  Anchises,  was  attributed 
to  Spenser  on  the  title-page  of  the  edition  of  1628,  but  must 
be  referred  to  his  disciple,  Phineas  Fletcher.  The  others  of 
the  class  are  negligible  until  we  reach  Narcissus  of  James 
Shirley,  published  two  years  after  Shakespeare's  death,  and 
a  poem  of  unusual  merit  and  beauty. 

The  unexampled  versatility  of  this  extraordinary  age  did 
not  even  stop  short  of  poetry  on  philosophy,  statecraft,  and 
topography,  and  extended  Spenserian  allegory  diversely  to 
religion  and  to  human  anatomy.  Sir  John  Davies,  of  whom 
we  have  already  heard  as  the  author  of  a  set  of  Gulling  Son- 
nets, attained  distinction  in  the  law.  In  his  youth  he  had 
written  a  series  of  Hymns  to  Astrcea,  1599,  each  an  acrostic 
constructed  on  the  words  "Elizabeta  Regina,"  and  surprisingly 
good  considering  such  limitations.  Davies  likewise  wrote  a 
clever  jeu  d' esprit  in  verse  called  Orchestra  or  a  Poem  on  Dan- 
cing, 1596,  in  which  he  represents  Antinous,  chief  of  the  suitors 
of  Penelope,  arguing  with  that  constant  lady  to  prove  the  art 
of  Terpsichore  the  move-all  and  be-all  of  the  world.  In  1599 
appeared  Davies  interesting  philosophical  poem,  Nosce 
Teipsum,  "a  discourse  in  two  elegies,"  so  runs  the  title,  "first 
of  humane  knowledge,  secondly,  of  the  soul  of  man  and  the 
immortality  thereof."  Davies'  work  has  been  well  described 
as  "  a  popular  exposition  of  current  ideas  by  a  man  who  has 
no  distinctive  opinions."  He  maintains  "with  the  agreeable 
assurance  of  a  ready  dialectician"  that  "all  learning  is  uncer- 
tain and  vain  except  knowledge  of  self  and  God";  and  he  has 
contrived  to  set  forth  these  metaphysical  commonplaces  in 
language  absolutely  simple  and  direct,  adorned  with  graceful 
and  fitting  illustration,  and  expressed  in  admirably  competent 
verse.  Nosce  Teipsum  is  as  typical  a  representative  of  Eliza- 
bethan popular  philosophy  as  the  Essay  on  Man  is  typical  of 
the  popular  thought  of  the  time  of  Queen  Anne;  nor  can 
Davies'  work  be  esteemed  a  less  successful  piece  of  that  hybrid, 
metaphysical  poetry.  In  reading  some  of  its  smooth  and  even 
stanzas  we  can  not  but  wonder  whether  Pope  did  not  know 


GREVILLE'S   POEMS  OF  STATE  219 

more  of  It  than  he  might  have  been  willing  to  confess.  And 
we  note  with  interest  that  Davies'  stanza  —  which  is  that  of 
Gray's  Elegy,  a  quatrain  of  decasyllabic  verse  alternately 
riming  —  is  also  the  same  which  Dryden  used  and  so  praised 
Davenant  for  "inventing"  thirty  years  after  the  death  of 
Davies. 

Fulke  Greville,  the  early  friend  of  Sidney,  is  the  author  of 
no  less  than  five  poetical  "Treatises,"  as  he  called  them,  on 
Human  Learning,  Fame  and  Honor,  War,  Monarchy  and 
Religion,  first  printed  posthumously  in  1633  in  Certain  Learned 
and  Elegant  JVorks.  It  is  doubtful  whether  they  may  not 
have  been  written  at  least  in  part  wuthin  the  reign  of  Queen 
Elizabeth.  On  their  political  side  these  abstract  and  often 
difficult  poems  deal  in  a  spirit  of  mingled  frankness  and  irony 
with  their  great  themes,  paralleling  the  counsels  of  Macchia- 
velli  in  his  Prince  in  parts  but  maintaining  throughout  that 
strange  Calvinistic  stoicism  which  is  characteristic  elsewhere 
of  their  exceedingly  interesting  author.  Greville's  Treastise- 
of  Human  Learning  not  only  links  on  to  Davies'  Nosce  Teip-. 
sum,  with  which  it  agrees  as  to  the  limitations  and  vanities 
of  human  knowledge,  but  comes  into  contact  as  well  with 
Bacon's  manifesto  of  the  new  science.  The  Advancement" 
of  Learning,  printed  in  1605.  It  falls,  too,  into  contrast  with 
Daniel's  fine  poem  Musophilus,  or  a  General  Defence  of  all  • 
Learning,  1 599,  which  in  a  dialogue  between  Musophilus,  the 
lover  of  the  Muses,  and  Philocosmus,  the  worldly  man,  en- 
thusiastically upholds  the  "holy  skill"  of  letters  and  stands 
opposed  alike  to  the  popular  agnosticism  of  Davies,  to  the 
"practical  utility"  of  Bacon,  and  to  the  "moral  utility  of 
Greville."  Daniel  has  well  been  considered  one  of  the  last 
of  the  humanists;  for  in  him  was  combined,  to  the  full,  the 
love  of  learning  and  the  appreciation  of  the  dignity  of  the 
scholar,  with  a  fine  loyalty  to  England  and  faith  in  the  great 
destiny  of  the  English  tongue.  The  following  apostrophe 
to  "heavenly  Eloquence,"  recently  quoted  by  Mr.  Court- 
hope,  deserves  transcription  for  its  truly  'imperial"  prophecy 
of  that  spread  and  potency  of  our  language  which  we  have 
come  now  in  part  to  know. 


220        NARRATIVE  AND   PASTORAL  VERSE 

Thou,  that  cans't  do  much  more  with  one  poor  pen 

Than  all  the  powers  of  princes  can  effect: 

And  draw,  divert,  dispose,  and  fashion  men 

Better  than  force  or  rigor  can  direct. 

Should  we  this  instrument  of  glory  then 

As  th'  unmaterial  fruit  of  shades  neglect  ? 

Or  should  we  careless  come  behind  the  rest 

In  power  of  words  that  go  before  in  worth, 

Whereas  our  accents,  equal  to  the  best. 

Is  able  greater  wonders  to  bring  forth. 

Where  all  that  ever  hotter  spirits  exprest 

Comes  bettered  by  the  patience  of  the  north. 

And  who  in  times  knows  whither  we  may  vent 

The  treasure  of  our  tongue,  to  what  strange  shores 

This  gain  of  our  best  glory  shall  be  sent, 

T'  enrich  unknowing  nations  with  our  stores  ? 

What  worlds  in  the  yet  unformed  Occident 

May  come  refined  with  accents  that  are  ours  .'' 

Or  who  can  tell  for  what  great  work  in  hand 

The  greatness  of  our  style  is  now  ordained, 

What  powers  it  shall  bring  in,  what  spirits  command, 

What  thoughts  let  out,  what  humors  keep  restrained. 

What  mischief  it  may  powerfully  withstand. 

And  what  fair  ends  may  thereby  be  attained  ? 

Returning  to  the  honorable  name  of  Michael  Drayton,  as 
early  as  1598  he  is  reported  to  have  been  engaged  on  a  work 
called  Polyolhion^  printed  in  part  in  16 13,  and  completed  in 
thirty  "songs'*  in  1622.  The  title  describes  this  truly  sur- 
prising work  as  "a  chorographical  description  of  all  the  tracts, 
rivers,  mountains,  forests  and  other  parts  of  this  renowned 
isle  of  Great  Britain,  with  intermixture  of  the  most  remarkable 
stories,  antiquities,  wonders,  rareties,  pleasures,  and  com- 
modities of  the  same  .  .  .  digested  into  a  poem  by  Michael 
Drayton."  It  is  amazing  in  a  work  of  such  stupendous 
length  and  with  subject-matter  by  its  nature  so  monotonous, 
how  uniformly  poetical  the  author  has  contrived  to  be.  Poly- 
olhion  is  truly  a  production  without  parallel  in  the  annals  of 
any  literature;  for  as  Lamb  said,  Drayton  "has  not  left  a 
rivulet  so  narrow  that  it  may  be  stepped  over  without  honor- 


DRAYTON'S  "POLYOLBION"  221 

able  mention,  and  has  associated  hills  and  streams  with  life 
and  passion  beyond  the  dreams  of  old  mythology."  This 
grand  and  patriotic  theme,  the  celebration  of  his  fatherland, 
Drayton  must  have  derived  from  the  unfulfilled  dreams  of  the 
old  antiquary  Leland.  Selden,  the  famous  scholar  and  pub- 
licist, did  not  disdain  to  adorn  the  earlier  part  of  Draytons* 
work  with  learned  notes  and  commentary,  and  the  original 
editions  are  illustrated  with  quaint  maps  in  which  the  personi- 
fied geniuses  of  town  and  country  are  represented  bodily  to  the 
view.  Ridiculous  as  it  may  seem  thus  to  personify  every  hill 
and  metamorphose  every  stream  into  a  classical  nymph  or 
river  god,  and  alien  as  is  Drayton's  old  alexandrine  verse  to 
our  modern  tastes,  no  one  reading  in  the  Polyolhion  can  fail 
to  recognize  the  poet  in  Drayton  and  to  treat  with  becoming 
respect  these  labors  of  a  by-gone  time  that  stand  like  huge 
Pelasgian  walls,  inexplicable  from  the  hands  of  men  as  men 
are  now. 

Despite  the  many  other  poetical  influences  that  give  to  the 
age  of  Elizabeth  a  variety  in  quality  and  kind  not  surpassed 
in  Victorian  times,  the  dominant  concord  of  Spenser's  sweet 
verse  was  heard  strong  and  constant  in  the  poetical  concert 
that  continued  for  a  generation  after  his  death.  Spenser's 
allegory,  his  continuousness,  his  delight  leisurely  to  dwell  on 
beautiful  details,  his  diffuseness  and  carelessness  as  to  design 
or  as  to  ultimately  landing  from  the  crystal  flood  of  his  on- 
flowing  verse  anywhere:  all  of  these  qualities  w-ere  perpet- 
uated in  his  kind,  though  no  one  of  the  Spenserians  reaches 
a  place  beside  his  master. 

Allusion  has  already  been  made  to  the  poetical  Fletchers. 
Besides  John,  the  great  dramatist,  and  Giles  the  elder,  his 
uncle,  who  wrote  sonnets  in  the  sonnet  time  and  traveled  into 
Muscovy,  there  were  the  two  Spenserians,  sons  of  Giles, 
named  Phineas  and  Giles  the  younger;  and  there  was  like- 
wise, somewhat  later,  a  religious  poet  Joseph  Fletcher,  who 
does  not,  however,  concern  us  .  Phineas  Fletcher  was  born 
in  1582;  Giles,  his  brother,  some  three  or  four  years  after. 
Both  were  educated  at  Cambridge  and  both  entered  the  church, 
leading  useful  if  uneventful   lives.     Giles  the  younger  died 


222       NARRATIVE  AND   PASTORAL  VERSE 

early,  in  1623;  Phineas  was  alive  in  1649.  "^^^  frequent 
allusions  in  their  poetry,  each  to  the  other,  disclose  the  warm 
brotherly  affection  between  them,  and  their  poetical  kinship 
is  as  close  as  that  of  their  blood. 

Christ's  Victory  and  Triumph  by  Giles  Fletcher  the 
younger  was  published  at  Cambridge  in  1610.  It  is  an 
ambitious  epic  poem  in  the  manner  of  Spenser,  treating  of 
Christ's  victory  in  heaven,  on  earth,  his  triumph  over  death, 
and  his  triumph  after  death.  The  subject  is  overlaid  with 
an  exuberance  of  allegory,  typifying  and  personifying  the 
emotions  and  passions,  and  is  full  of  passages  of  exquisite 
poetical  imagery.  Giles  Fletcher  attempts  a  variation  on  the 
famous  Spenserian  stanza,  reducing  it  to  eight  lines  by  the 
omission  of  the  sixth.  Christ's  Victory  and  Triumph  is  a 
beautiful  poem  of  its  type  and  throbs  at  times  with  the  true 
religious  fervor  which  distinguishes  the  rapturous  religious 
poetry  of  Richard  Crashaw.  Phineas  Fletcher's  contribu- 
tion to  the  poetry  of  this  class  is  almost  equally  successful,  if 
more  curious  in  kind.  The  Purple  Island  was  first  printed 
in  1633.  It  is  the  opinion  of  Dr.  Grosart,  Fletcher's  editor, 
that  the  poem  was  substantially  written  as  we  have  it  early 
in  the  days  of  King  James,  an  opinion  true  in  the  main,  if 
perhaps  questionable  as  to  those  passages  which  show  a  grasp 
and  understanding  of  Harvey's  famous  discovery  of  the  cir- 
culation of  the  blood,  a  first  announcement  of  which  was  made 
by  him  in  a  lecture  in  the  year  of  the  death  of  Shakespeare. 
The  Purple  Island  is  "an  elaborate  allegorical  description  of 
the  human  body  and  of  the  vices  and  virtues  to  which  man  is 
subject."  The  body  is  figured  as  an  island,  the  bones  its 
foundation,  the  veins  its  streams,  and  so  on  into  a  multiplicity 
of  minute  detail,  though  it  is  fair  to  state  that  the  poem  has  a 
wider  scope  and  rises  in  the  later  cantos  to  an  allegory  of  man's 
intellectual  processes,  his  emotions,  and  even  of  his  religious 
ideas.  The  whole  is  framed  in  a  pastoral  setting  and  many 
are  the  passages  which  for  truth  to  picturesque  nature,  poetic 
beauty  of  expression,  and  musical  flow  of  verse  are  worthy 
the  inspiration  of  their  great  master,  Spenser.  It  seems  hardly 
fair  to  quote  from  so  fine  a  poem  a  passage  which  emphasizes 


ECLOGUES  AND  PASTORALS  223 

its  chief  defect.  Yet  the  following  is  alone  enough  to  show 
what  Spenserian  allegory  could  become  when  ingenuity  tri- 
umphed, as  it  did  only  too  often  in  long,  uninspired  reaches  of 
the  Spenserians,  over  poetic  inspiration.  The  poet  —  or 
rather  the  allegorist  —  has  been  describing  the  human  mouth 
as  an  "arched  cave."     He  continues: 

At  that  cave's  mouth  twice  sixteen  porters  stand, 

Receivers  of  the  customary  rent; 
Of  each  side  four  —  the  foremost  of  the  band  — 

Whose  office  to  divide  what  in  is  sent: 
Straight  other  four  break  it  in  pieces  small; 
And  at  each  hand  twice  five,  which  grinding  all, 
Fit  it  for  convoy  and  this  city's  arsenal. 

In  The  Purple  Island  and  in  Christ's  Victory  and  Triumph 
we  have  Spenserian  allegory,  Spenserian  epic  continuity,  even 
an  imitation  of  Spenserian  stanza,  for  The  Purple  Island  is 
written  in  the  meter  of  Christ's  Victory,  which  we  have  seen 
was  a  variation  —  not  an  improvement  —  on  the  stanza  of 
The  Faery  Queen.  But  the  influence  of  Spenser  in  the  pas- 
toral was  even  more  per\'asive  and  lasting.  A  list  of  English 
eclogues  following  The  Shepherds'  Calendar  and  running  not 
beyond  the  lifetime  of  Shakespeare,  includes  the  names  of 
Peele,  Watson,  Barnfield,  Lodge,  Sabbie,  Drayton,  William 
Browne,  George  Wither,  and  Christopher  Brooke.  Of 
these  an  unimportant  Eclogue  Gratulatory,  addressed  to  the 
Earl  of  Essex,  was  published  by  Peele  in  1589.  Thomas 
Watson's  Alelibceus,  an  elegy  on  the  death  of  the  queen's 
secretary.  Sir  Francis  Walsingham,  was  written  first  in  Latin 
and  translated  by  the  author  in  the  following  year.  Watson 
was  the  author  of  other  Latin  eclogues.  Barnfield's  Affection- 
ate Shepherd,  four  years  later,  is  a  free  following  of  the  Ver- 
gilian  eclogue,  and  the  work  of  a  rare  young  poet  of  whom 
it  may  be  said  that  he  deserved  the  confusion  which  long 
existed  between  some  of  his  lyrics  and  Shakespeare's.  Lodge 
wrote  both  eclogues  of  an  amatory  and  of  a  meditative  cast. 
The  first  are  found  in  Phtllis  honored  with  Pastoral  Sonnets, 
1593;  the  second  form  part  of  his  little  volume  entitled  A 
Fig  for  Momus,   and   appeared    two  years   later.     In    these 


224        NARRATIVE  AND   PASTORAL  VERSE 

latter  Lodge  displays  his  literary  relations  to  Spenser,  Dray- 
ton, and  Daniel,  whom  he  celebrates  under  guise  of  pastoral 
names,  and  shows,  like  Spenser  before  him,  that  he  had  read 
the  popular  eclogues  of  Mantuan.  Lodge  is  always  a  sweet 
poet  and  a  master  of  musical  effect;  but  he  is  happier  in  the 
lyric  pastoral  than  in  the  eclogue.  Pan  s  Pipe  by  Francis 
Sabbie  of  the  same  date  is  described  in  the  title  as  "three 
pastoral  eclogues  in  English  hexameters."  It  is  a  less  nota- 
ble work  and  equally  referable  to  previous  models.  William 
Basse's  three  pastoral  elegies,  published  in  1602,  really  form 
a  short  pastoral  romance.  Like  his  later  work,  beyond  our 
period,  they  are  possessed  of  little  merit. 

The  most  important  of  Spenser's  followers  in  the  reign  of 
Queen  Elizabeth  was  Drayton,  whose  industry  and  genuine 
poetic  gift  once  more  inspire  and  hold  our  esteem.  It  was 
in  1593  that  Drayton  published  his  Idea,  the  Shepherd's 
Garland  fashioned  into  Nine  Eclogues;  a  tenth  with  much 
revision  of  the  rest  appeared  in  1606;  and  towards  the  end  of 
his  career  the  poet  returned  to  the  pastoral  mode  in  his  Muses' 
Elizium  as  he  had  still  practised  it  as  occasion  arose  through- 
out the  Polyolhion  and  elsewhere.  The  Shepherds'  Calendar 
was  undoubtedly  the  model  of  the  young  poet,  although  The 
Shepherd's  Garland  is  knit  in  no  such  close  continuity  as 
Spenser's  poem.  Drayton's  pastorals,  too,  are  less  weighted 
with  serious  matter  moral  and  religious  and  freer  from  veiled 
satire.  Like  Spenser's  they  sound  the  full  gamut  of  the  oaten 
reed,  treating  of  love  requited  and  unrequited,  eulogizing  the 
queen  in  a  fine  ode,  and  meditating  "in  higher  strains." 
Drayton  uses  a  great  variety  of  meters,  is  full  of  genuine 
touches  of  nature,  and  musical  with  the  choice  lyrical  gift  of 
his  time. 

We  may  pass  such  a  production  of  mixed  verse  and  prose 
as  England's  Mourning  Garment  Worn  by  Plain  Shepherds, 
wherein  Henry  Chettle,  memorable  as  the  editor  of  Greene's 
Groatsworth  of  Wit,  lamented  the  death  of  "Elizabeth,  queen 
of  virtue,  while  she  lived,  and  theme  of  sorrow,  being  dead." 
It  is  chiefly  interesting  for  his  arraignment  of  the  poets  Warner, 
Chapman,  Jonson,  Shakespeare,  Drayton,  and  others  for  not 


LATER   SPENSERIANS  225 

singing  threnodies  to  her  deceased  majesty.  Shakespeare, 
especially,  under  the  pastoral  name  of  Melicert,  is  adjured  to 

Drop  from  his  honied  Muse  one  sable  tear. 
To  mourn  her  death  that  graced  his  desert, 
And  to  his  lays  opened  her  royal  ear. 

There  is  record  of  the  writing  of  twelve  eclogues  about  this 
time  by  Edward  Fairfax,  the  translator  of  Tasso.  But  only 
two  of  them  and  the  fragment  of  a  third  are  now  extant.  They 
are  said  to  concern  chiefly  contemporary  afl^airs,  to  deal  with 
abuses  in  the  church  and  in  a  panegyric  of  English  maritime 
adventure.  Minor  pastoralists  of  the  earlier  years  of  King 
James  were  Sir  George  Buc,  Master  of  the  Revels  from  1608 
to  1622,  and  Lewis  Machin,  a  very  small  dramatist.  The 
first  used  the  eclogue  form  to  celebrate  the  Plantagenet  suc- 
cession in  a  curious  poem  entitled  Daphnis  Polystephanos, 
printed  in  1605.  Machin's  three  ecolgues,  in  easy  but  no 
very  distinguished  verse,  touch  on  erotic  themes  of  the  class 
o^Hero  and  Leander  and  appeared  affixed  to  a  like  production 
by  William  Barkstead,  the  actor,  called  Mirrha  the  Mother 
of  Adonis,  bearing  date  1607.  Needless  to  say,  neither  Fair- 
fax, Buc,  nor  Machin  write  in  the  manner  of  Spenser. 

The  last  group  of  Spenserians,  all  of  them  pastoralists, 
cluster  about  the  closing  years  of  Shakespeare's  life.  William 
Browne  of  Tavistock  is  chief  among  them,  an  amiable  retiring 
man,  possessed  of  a  simplicity  of  character  and  heartfelt  love 
of  nature  that  remind  us  somewhat  of  Wordsworth,  remote 
though  Browne  is  from  any  trace  of  Wordsworth's  power  of 
spiritual  insight.  Browne  lived  between  1591  and  1643.  He 
received  his  education  at  Exeter  College,  Oxford,  CliflTord's 
Inn,  and  the  Inner  Temple,  for  which  last  he  wrote  a  beautiful 
masque.  Like  so  many  of  the  poets  before  him,  Browne  en- 
joyed the  patronage  and  encouragement  of  the  Herbert 
family,  and  his  poetical  impulse  comes  direct  from  the  pas- 
toral poetry  of  Drayton,  his  acknowledged  friend  and  sponsor. 
Besides  Browne,  there  was  Christopher  Brooke,  son  of  a 
wealthy  tradesman  who  had  been  thrice  mayor  of  his  na- 
tive  town  of  York,   and   a   friend    and   intimate  of  Donne. 


226       NARRATIVE  AND   PASTORAL  VERSE 

George  Wither,  most  voluminous  of  later  pamphleteers,  in 
whom  the  acid  of  satire  spoiled  one  of  the  sweetest  of  poets, 
was  the  third;  and  John  Davies  of  Hereford,  the  writing- 
master  and  author  of  many  books  in  verse  and  prose,  seems 
likewise  to  have  been  of  their  counsels.  In  1613  appeared 
Browne's  Britannia  s  Pastorals;  in  1614,  his  Shepherd's 
Pipe,  to  which  were  added  eclogues  by  the  other  three.  In 
1615  Wither  wrote  his  Shepherd's  Hunting  while  a  prisoner 
for  libel  in  the  Marshelsea,  and  in  1616  Browne  issued  a 
second  instalment  of  Britannia's  Pastorals,  a  third  part  re- 
maining until  the  last  century  in  manuscript.  In  this  group 
of  pastoral  poems  we  have  by  far  the  most  important  contri- 
bution of  its  kind  to  English  literature  and  it  is  suprising  to 
find  how  single  an  influence  pervades  this  by  no  means  in- 
considerable body  of  poetry.  Wither's  Shepherd's  Hunting 
conceals  an  allegory  of  his  own  imprisonment  for  "hunting" 
with  his  many  hounds  of  satire  (in  his  J  buses  Stript  and  JVhipt, 
161 1)  the  monsters  of  the  country-side.  Otherwise  these 
eclogues  are  without  ulterior  allusion  save  to  the  pleasant 
poetical  friendship  of  the  little  brotherhood.  Story  in  these 
poems  there  is  none,  and  their  diffuseness  far  exceeds  that  of 
Spenser.  But  the  readers  of  Browne  and  his  fellows  may  feel 
sure  that  "at  whatever  page  they  open,  they  have  not  far  to 
travel  before  they  find  entertainment." 

Browne  is  essentially  a  descriptive  poet,  his  "mood  is 
generally  calm  and  quiet,  like  the  painter  of  actual  scenery." 
There  is  little  movement  in  his  poetry,  a  broken  and  meander- 
ing thread  of  story,  and  next  to  no  human  interest.  Even  his 
lyric  moods,  which  are  often  graceful,  have  almost  none  of 
that  glow  and  fervor  which  is  characteristic  of  many  of  his 
contemporaries.  The  strongest  trait  of  Browne,  as  of  Dray- 
ton, is  his  devoted  love  of  country;  but  where  Drayton  with 
impartial  loyalty  celebrates  all  England  in  particularizing 
each  part,  Browne,  strong  in  his  local  affections,  never  strays 
far  from  his  native  Tavistock  and  realizes  the  dreams  of 
Arcadia  in  the  familiar  features  of  his  native  Devonshire. 
Thus  it  is  that  Browne  expresses  himself  in  terms  of  this 
amiable  provincialism: 


WILLIAM   BROWNE  227 

Hail,  thou,  my  native  soil!   thou  blessed  plot, 

Whose  equal  all  the  world  afFordeth  not! 

Show  me  who  can  so  many  crystal  rills; 

Such  sweet-clothed  valleys  or  aspiring  hills; 

Such  wood-ground  pastures,  quarries,  wealthy  mines; 

Such  rocks  in  whom  the  diamond  fairly  shines; 

And  if  the  earth  can  show  the  like  again. 

Yet  will  she  fail  in  her  sea-ruling  men. 

Time  never  can  produce  men  to  o'ertake 

The  fames  of  Grenville,  Davies,  Gilbert,  Drake, 

Of  worthy  Hawkins,  or  of  thousands  more 

That  by  their  power  made  the  Devonian  shore 

Mock  the  proud  Tagus;   for  whose  richest  spoil 

The  boasting  Spaniard  left  the  Indian  soil 

Bankrupt  of  store,  knowing  it  would  quit  cost 

By  winning  this,  though  all  the  rest  were  lost. 

In  conclusion  of  these  paragraphs  on  the  pastoralists  that 
followed  Spenser  I  shall  quote  not  Drayton,  most  poetical  and 
resourceful  in  this  kind  of  poetry,  nor  Brow^ne,  who  approached 
most  nearly  our  modern  conception  of  the  touch  with  nature; 
but  make  some  amends  to  excellent  Phineas  Fletcher,  for 
having  gibbeted  his  ingenious  allegory,  by  choosing  two  or 
three  stanzas  from  several  of  equal  merit  in  his  Purple  Islandy 
that  express  to  perfection  this  outworn  ideal  of  the  golden  age. 

Thrice,  oh  thrice  happy  shepherd's  life  and  state. 

When  courts  are  happiness'  unhappy  pawns! 
His  cottage  low  and  safely  humble  gate 

Shuts  out  proud  Fortune  with  her  scorns  and  fawns; 
No  feared  treason  breaks  his  quiet  sleep: 
Singing  all  day,  his  flocks  he  learns  to  keep; 
Himself  as  innocent  as  are  his  simple  sheep. 

Instead  of  music  and  base  flattering  tongues, 

Which  wait  to  first-salute  my  lord's  uprise; 
The  cheerful  lark  wakes  him  with  early  songs. 

And  birds'  sweet  whistling  notes  unlock  his  eyes: 
In  country  plays  is  all  the  strife  he  uses. 
Or  sing,  or  dance  unto  the  rural  Muses; 
And  but  in  music's  sports,  all  differences  refuses. 


228        NARRATIVE  AND   PASTORAL  VERSE 

His  certain  life  that  never  can  deceive  him, 
Is  full  of  thousand  sweets  and  rich  content: 

The  smooth-leav'd  beeches  in  the  field  receive  him 
With  coolest  shades,  till  noon-tide  rage  is  spent: 

His  life  is  neither  tost  in  boist'rous  seas 

Of  troublous  world,  nor  lost  in  slothful  ease; 

Pleased  and  full  blest  he  lives,  when  he  his  God  can  please. 

His  bed  of  wool  yields  safe  and  quiet  sleeps. 

While  by  his  side  his  faithful  spouse  hath  place: 

His  little  son  into  his  bosom  creeps, 
The  lively  picture  of  his  father's  face: 

Never  his  humble  house  or  state  torment  him; 

Less  he  could  like,  if  less  his  God  had  sent  him: 

And  when  he  dies,  green  turfs  with  grassy  tomb  content  him. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

JONSON  AND  THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION 

THE  greatest  of  Shakespeare's  contemporaries  in  the 
drama,  a  man  historically  even  more  important  than 
Shakespeare  himself,  was  Ben  Jonson,  poet,  playwright, 
critic,  satirist,  laureate,  and  dictator  of  his  time.  Jonson 
was  born  in  the  year  1573,  of  a  border  family  of  Annandale, 
and  was  the  posthumous  son  of  a  minister  who  had  lost  his 
estate  by  forfeiture  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Mary.  His  widow 
marrying  again  and  beneath  her,  Jonson  was  "brought  up 
poorly,"  but  "put  to  school"  at  Westminster,  and  there  be- 
friended by  the  learned  antiquary,  Camden.  Fuller  states 
that  from  Westminster  Jonson  went  to  [St.  John's  College] 
Cambridge.  If  so,  he  remained  but  a  short  time;  for  he 
afterwards  told  Drummond  that  **he  was  Master  of  Arts  in 
both  universities  by  their  favor,  not  his  study."  The  trade 
of  his  step-father,  that  of  bricklaying,  proving  distasteful, 
Jonson  enlisted  as  a  soldier  and  relates  that  "in  his  service 
in  the  Low  Countries,"  he  had,  "in  the  face  of  both  the  camps, 
killed  an  enemy  and  taken  opima  spolia  from  him."  Jonson 
returned  to  London  in  1592,  married,  and  began  writing  for 
the  stage,  probably  about  1595.  In  1597  he  was  in  the  employ 
of  Henslowe  and  acting  as  one  of  the  Admiral's  men;  and  in 
the  following  year  he  is  included  in  Meres'  roll  of  honor  as 
one  of  the  best  contemporary  writers  of  comedy.  It  was  in 
that  year  that  Jonson  killed  "in  duel"  a  fellow  actor,  named 
Gabriel  Spencer,  for  w^hich  offense  he  was  tried  at  Old  Bailey 
and  found  guilty.  He  escaped  the  gallows  by  pleading  the 
benefit  of  clergy,  but  remained  some  time  in  prison.  It  was 
under  the  stress  of  these  experiences  that  Jonson  became  a 
Roman  Catholic;  but  he  returned  to  the  faith  of  the  Church 
of  England  after  some  ten  or  a  dozen  years.  A  pleasing 
tradition  of  this   period   relates   that  on  his   release   Jonson 

229 


230  THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION 

sought  employment  for  his  pen  with  Henslowe's  rivals,  the 
Lord  Chamberlain's  company,  in  which  Shakespeare  had 
already  become  a  prominent  shareholder;  and  that  Every 
Man  in  his  Humor  was  accepted  by  that  company  through 
the  good  offices  of  Shakespeare  who,  we  know,  acted  a  part. 
This  was  the  corner-stone  of  Jonson's  success,  though  in  all 
likelihood  by  no  means  the  first  of  his  dramatic  efforts. 

Every  Man  in  his  Humor,  acted   in    1598,  is    a    satirical 
comedy  of  London  life,  skilfully  constructed  on  the  recogni- 
tion of  two  principles:   the  necessity  of  sketching  direct  from 
life  and  the  desirability  of  drawing  your  picture  in  a  manner 
already  accepted  as  in  accord  with  good  art  and  a  recognized 
method.     The  comedy  runs  on  an  exceedingly  slender  story, 
the  mistake  of  a  father  as  to  the  real  character  of  his  son,  his 
following  to  observe  him,  and  the  consequences  to  both  and 
to  the  little  group  of  personages  by  whom  they  are  surrounded. 
The  general  intermeddling  of  a  man-servant,  named  Brain- 
worm,  possessed  of  a  mania  for  fooling  everybody,  precipitates 
several  situations;    the  rest  are  the  results  of  some  dominant 
(trait  of  each   character.      In  a  word,  in  Every  Man  in  his 
Humor  we  have  an  example  of  a  new  kind  of  comedy,  con- 
,  sciously  developed  by  Jonson  on  the  basis  of  a  very  definite 
'  theory  of  life  and  art,  and  known  as  the  comedy  of  humors. 
\,    I  The  word  "humor"  in  the  parlance  of  the  day  signified  a 
superficial  tendency  or    bias  of  disposition  that  so  ruled   a 
person,  permanently  or  for  the  moment,  that  one  could  say, 
this  man  affects  gravity,  this  is  a  disconsolate  lover,  this  third 
,      is  a  braggart  or  an  affected  fop.     Jonson  did  not  invent  the 
^     word  "humor";  and  characters,  thus  conceived,  were  not  only 
known  to  the  stage  before  his  time  but  were  devised  as  made 
up  of  "humors"  by_Cha£man  a  little  before  Every  Man  in 
his  Humor.     Jonsonj^extfiliding  this  popular  idea,  held  that 
/\  a  "humor"  should  be  some  overwhelming  passion  or  unmis- 

"^      takable  warp  in  character,  such  as  Brainworm's  passion  for 
gulling  everybody,  Bobadil's  mania  of  boasting  though  he  is 
a  coward  at  heart,  or  Dow.nright,  described  in  his  name;   and 
he  avoided^  making  his  personages  turn  (as  did  some  of  his 
.   imitators)    on    pett^^ji^ectations    or   mannerisms    of  speech. 


JONSON'S  COMEDY  OF  HUMORS  231 

Moreover,  he  constructed  his  play  out  of  this  cl^  of  incon- 
gruous humors,  and  was  concerned  less  with  a  picture,  much 
less  a  story,  of  actual  life  than  with  the  opportunity  which 
this  method  afforded  him  for  devising_jidiculous  situations, 
witty  dij^lqgue,  and  unlooked-for  outcomes.     Life  is  not  much 
like  such  a  succession  of  the  clever  unexpected;  though  Jon- 
son's    scenes    can    not   be    pronounced    absolutely   untrue    to 
human  nature.     The  characters  of  men  in  the  world  are  not- 
built  up  on  such  impossibly  simple  lines;    yet  the  attention 
may  not  unfairly  be  directed  to  the  ruling  passion  of  a  given 
personage,  and  personages,  so  possessed  for  the  nonce,  be 
chosen  legitimately  as   subjects   for  the   persons  of  comedy. 
In   Every  Man    in  his  Humor  Jonson  succeeded  surprisingly 
well  in  picturing,  in  vivid  realism,  the  absurdities,  the  eccen- 
tricities and  predicaments,  so  to  speak,  of  Elizabethan  life 
in  terms  of  a  glorified  adaptation  ofjhe  technique  of  Plautus. 
This  new  variety  of  the  comedy  of  manners  leaped  into 
immediate   acceptance   and   popularity.     It  was  imitated   by 
everybody,  at  times  by  those  not  fitted  for  it;   it  was  parodied 
and   misunderstood.     It  was    used   for   single    characters   or 
groups  of  them,  as  an  underplot  or  episode;   and  this  concep- 
tion of  stage  character,  degenerating  frequently  into  carica- 
ture, continued  to  tinge   the   drama  onward   to  the   days  of 
Sheridan,  if  not  beyond.     But  we  are  not  concerned  with  these 
wide  influences.     Among  immediate  effects,  the  word  "humor" 
became  current  in  colloquial  speech  and  in  titles  of  other  plays: 
for  example,  Jonson  himself  reemployed  it  in  Every  Man  out 
of  his  Humor  and,  later,  in   The  Magnetic  Lady  or  Humors 
Reconciled.     There  was  an  anonymous  and  inferior  comedy 
called  Every  Woman  in  her  Humor,  1600,  imitating  more  than 
Jonson's  title;  and,  besides  Chapman's  Humorous  Days  Mirth 
in   1599,  Day  wrote  a   sprightly  comedy  entitled  Humor  out 
of  Breath,  printed  in  1608.    As  to  Chapman,  he  was,  in  comedy 
at  least,  wholly  of  Jonson's  school  and  method,  as  his  admir- 
able All  Fools,  1 599, and  MayDay,two  years  later,attest.   Field 
was  literally  Jonson's  scholar  in  the  drama.     But  Jonson  in 
this  example  of  his  comedy  of  humors  was  not  even  without 
his  influence  on  the  catholic   and  adaptable  spirit  of  Shake- 


232  THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION 

speare.  It  seems  not  irrational  to  refer  such  a  group  of  humor- 
ists as  FalstafF  and  his  rout  —  Bardolph  of  the  carbuncled 
nose,  Pistol  with  his  bombast  scraps  of  plays,  FalstafF  himself 
of  unmeasured  girth,  and  that  "minnow,"  his  contrasted 
page  —  to  this  Jonsonian  attempt  to  conceive  theatrical  per- 
sonages on  lines  of  definite  simplicity  and  salient  quality. 
Dr.  Caius  and  his  group  in  The  Merry  Wives,  and  the  typical 
Scotch,  Welsh,  and  Irish  soldiers  of  Henry  V,  are  similiar 
examples.  All  these  plays  correspond  in  point  of  time  with 
the  new  rage  of  the  Jonsonian  humor,  as  did  many  others  by 
lesser  men  such,  for  example,  as  Oldcastle  and  The  Merry  Devil 
of  Edmonton,  in  both  of  which  like  groups  of  humorists  recur. 
During  the  next  three  years,  from  1599  to  1602,  Jonson 
was  engaged  in  a  theatrical  struggle  conducted  by  means  of 
satirical  dramas  which  is  known  to  the  history  of  the  stage 
as  the  war  of  the  theaters.  Throughout  the  latter  years  of 
the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth  the  Chamberlain's  company, 
acting  continuously  at  the  Globe,  maintained  its  lead  in  the 
dramatic  profession.  Its  principal  rivals  were  the  Admiral's 
men  who  occupied  the  Rose  and  moved,  on  its  completion 
in  1600,  to  Alleyn's  new  Fortune  Theater  in  Golding  Lane, 
Cripplegate.  In  these  years  the  companies  of  boy  actors 
assumed  an  extraordinary  importance.  These  were  the  Chil- 
dren of  the  Chapel  Royal  who  occupied  the  private  theater 
which  Burbage  had  built  in  Blackfriars  from  the  time  of  its 
erection,  in  1596,  and  the  Children  of  Paul's  who  appear  to 
have  acted  in  their  singing-school  attached  to  the  cathedral. 
It  has  recently  been  argued,  as  we  have  seen  above,  that  the 
prominence  of  the  former  company  was  due  directly  to  royal 
patronage  and  that  these  boys,  under  the  aggressive  leader- 
ship of  Nathaniel  Giles,  Master  of  the  Queen's  Chapel,  were 
really  maintained  as  actors,  as  well  as  singers  for  the  Royal 
Chapel,  out  of  the  royal  purse.  At  any  rate,  save  for  Shake- 
speare,they  commanded  the  best  pens  of  the  moment,  Jonson's 
among  them;  and  they  enjoyed,  for  two  or  three  years,  an 
unusual  vogue  because  of  the  emphasis  which  they  laid,  in 
the  plays  written  for  them,  on  a  general  satire  of  the  times  and 
even  on  personal  attack  and  lampoon. 


:ITV  )1 

WAR  OF  THE  THEATERS  233 

To  be  sure,  satire  was  no  new  thing  in  the  drama  and  there 
is  reason  to  believe  that  individual  and  personal  attack  had 
been'  employed  on  the  stage  not  only  privately,  as  at  the 
universities,  but  publicly  also  and  especially  in  the  Martin 
Marprelate  controversy,  an  account  of  which  has  been  given 
in  a  previous  chapter.  The  Marprelate  plays  have  perished. 
Lyly  and  Nash  were  the  dramatists  chiefly  concerned  in  them. 
As"tb  the  war  of  the  theaters,  or  the  "poetomachia,"  as  Dekker 
called  it,  its  origin  is  not  certainly  known.  Some  have  re- 
ferred it  to  allusions  of  a  satirical  nature  to  Jonson,  contained 
in  a  satire  by  John  Marston  entitled  The  Scourge  of  FiUainy. 
Jonson  himself  declared  that  "he  had  many  quarrels  with 
Marston,  beat  him,  and  took  his  pistol  from  him,  wrote  his 
Poetaster  on  him;  the  beginning  of  them  were  that  Marston 
represented  him  on  the  stage."  The  "war"  assumed  two 
aspects  from  the  first,  the  critical,  in  which  Jonson  arrogated 
to  himself  the  censorship  of  poetry  and  the  stage,  and  the 
personal,  wherein  he  vigorously  lampooned  his  enemies.  We 
are  certain  that  the  principals  were  Jonson  and  Marston. 
Concerning  the  seconds  and  other  aiders  and  abettors,  much 
is  dubious.  Marston  was  two  or  three  years  the  junior  of 
Jonson,  and  was  the  son  of  a  lawyer,  sometime  lecturer  of  the 
Inner  Temple.  He  received  his  education  at  Brasenose 
College,  Oxford,  and  his  position  among  writers  of  non- 
dramatic  satire  in  verse  will  receive  our  later  consideration. 
Marston  made  a  distinguished  place  for  himself  as  a  dramatist 
within  the  first  decade  of  the  century  and,  entering  the  church, 
lived  on  until  1634.  He  was  an  opinionated  and  self-satisfied 
young  man  of  twenty-two  in  1598,  fresh  from  his  classics  at 
the  university,  and  possessed  of  a  conversancy  with  Italian 
which  he  had  from  his  mother.  Jonson,  as  the  new  writer 
of  comedies  of  humors,  just  come  into  vogue,  was  as  opin- 
ionated and  self-complaisant  in  his  success  as  was  ever  Mars- 
ton. It  is  likely  that  Jonson's  hands  were  by  no  means  clean 
when  he  was  attacked  by  Marston.  In  The  Case  is  Altered, 
a  quasi-romantic  comedy  written  before  Every  Man  in  his 
Humor  but  which  Jonson  never  acknowledged,  he  had  gib- 
beted several  of  his  contemporaries  satirically,  among  them 


23+  THE   CLASSICAL   REACTION 

Anthony  Munday.  In  Every  Man  in  his  Humor  he  had  quite 
as  certainly  satirized  in  Master  Matthew  the  poet  Daniel, 
against  whom  Jonson  bore  a  continual  grudge.  Daniel  had 
already  been  the  butt  of  dramatic  satire  at  the  hands  of  Chettle 
and  Dekker  in  one  of  the  personages  of  Patient  Grissel.  It 
seems  likely  that  Histriomastix,  a  play  revised  by  Marston 
in  1598,  contained  in  the  character  Chrisogonus,  a  poet, 
satirist,  and  translator,  poor  but  contemptuous  of  the  ignoble 
crowd,  a  picture  of  Jonson  and  one  by  no  means  discreditable 
to  him.  If  this  was  intended  by  Marston  as  amends,  Jonson 
refused  so  to  construe  it.  It  has  even  been  surmised  that  this 
is  the  representation  of  Jonson  on  the  stage  to  which  the  poet 
refers  as  the  beginning  of  the  quarrel.^ 

The  first  of  Jonson's  three  great  satires  in  dramatic  form 
is  Every  Man  out  of  his  Humor,  acted  by  the  Chamberlain's 
company  in  1599.  Whatever  differences  may  arise  among 
students  of  the  drama  as  to  individual  identifications,  there  can 
be  no  question  that  in  this  play  Jonson  lampooned  several  of 
his  fellow  poets,  although  the  front  of  the  satire  is  directed 
against  citizen  follies.  Munday,  Lodge,  Daniel  as  Fastidious 
Brisk,  "a  spruce,  affected  courtier,"  all  have  been  thought  to 
be  the  subject  of  Jonson's  wit  and  scorn;  whilst  Carlo  Buf- 
fone,  "a  public  scurrilous  and  profane  jester,"  was  formerly 
supposed  to  be  Marston  (author  of  The  Scourge  of  Villainy), 
especially  because  Carlo  is  pointedly  alluded  to  as  "the  grand 
scourge  or  second  untruss  (that  is  satirist)  of  the  time" 
(Joseph  Hall  having  boasted  himself  the  first).  Of  late, 
however,  there  has  been  a  return  to  an  old  identification  of 
Carlo  BufFone  with  a  notorious  person  named  Charles  Chester 
in  the  following  passage  from  gossipy  and  notoriously  inac- 
curate John  Aubrey.  He  relates  that  Chester  was  "a  bold 
importunate  fellow  ...  a  perpetual  talker,  and  made  a 
noise  like  a  drum  in  a  room.  So  one  time  at  a  tavern  Sir 
Walter  Raleigh  beats  him  and  seals  up  his  mouth  (that  is  his 

*On  this  whole  topic,  see  the  excellent  work  of  J.  H.  Penniman, 

7he  War  of  the  Theatres,  Publications  of  the  University  of  Penn- 
sylvania, 1897,  and  his  forthcoming  ed.  of  Poetaster  and  Satiro- 
mastix. 


THE   WAR   OF  THE   THEATERS  235 

upper  and  nether  beard)  with  hard  wax.  From  him  Ben 
Jonson  takes  his  Carlo  Buffone  (i.e.  jester),  in  Every  Man  in 
his  Humor."  Is  it  conceivable  that  after  all  Jonson  was 
ridiculing  Marston  and  that  the  point  of  the  satire  consisted 
in  part  at  least  in  an  intentional  confusion  of  the  "grand 
scourge  or  second  untruss"  with  "the  scurrilous  and  profane" 
Chester  ? 

Asper-Macilente  is  Jonson's  complaisant  picture  of  him- 
self, the  calm,  just,  learned  poet,  carrying  his  brow  high  and 
unruffled  in  the  midst  of  a  pack  of  the  yelping  curs  of  detrac- 
tion. In  1600  followed  Jonson's  more  elaborate  satire, 
Cynthia  s  Revels  or  the  Fountain  of  Self-Love,  this  time  acted 
by  the  Children  of  the  Queen's  Chapel,  and  still  further 
advancing  against  his  foes  with  the  direct  attack  of  his  biting 
and  galling  satire.  Here  Marston  is  certainly  ridiculed  in 
the  character  Anaides,  with  Daniel,  Lodge,  and  Munday  as 
before.  His  personages  Jonson  designates  characteristically 
under  abstract  names  of  Greek  origin.  Thus,  Anaides 
(Impudence),  Hedon  (Pleasure),  and  Asotus  (the  Prodigal) 

—  each  accompanied  by  an  appropriate  female  abstraction, 
Moria  (Folly),  Philautia  (Self-Love),  and  Argurion  (Money) 

—  appear  on  the  stage  in  brilliant  and  caustic  dialogue,  full 
of  allusions,  personal,  social,  local,  everything  but  political, 
most  of  them  lost  to  us  (despite  our  most  searching  scholar- 
ship) but  evidently  affording  an  entertainment  to  the  audiences 
of  the  day,  equaled  only  by  what  we  learn  of  Aristophanes  in 
ancient  Athens.  Jonson  himself  figures  as  the  righteous  and 
judicious  Crites.  The  reversion  of  Jonson  here,  as  again 
in  his  latest  plays,  to  the  abstractions  of  the  old  morality  and 
to  the  method  of  allegory  is  a  striking  characteristic  of  his 
strong  English  personality.  It  has  been  held  that  Jack 
Drum's  Entertainment,  another  unavowed  comedy  of  Marston, 
dating  1600,  contains  a  second  dramatic  attack  on  Jonson  in 
the  character  of  a  ridiculous  Frenchman  of  licentious  habits. 
Monsieur  Fo  de  King;  but  this  is  questionable  to  say  the 
least.  A  satirical  scene  of  Marston's  Antonio  and  Mellida, 
acted  also  in  1600,  between  Balurdo  and  a  painter,  has 
been  regarded  a  parody  of  a  similar  scene  between  Hieronimo 


236  THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION 

and  a  painter  which  occurs  in  that  part  of  The  Spanish 
Tragedy  which  we  know  that  Jonson  added  by  way  of  revision 
of  Kyd's  old  work.  But  this  assumes  an  earlier  date  for 
Jonson's  revision  than  has  yet  been  proved. 

Jonson's  third  and  final  dramatic  satire  was  Poetaster, 
acted  (once  more  by  the  Chapel  Children)  in  1601.  Here 
his  avowed  quarry  was  the  inferior  poets  of  the  time  who,  he 
declares,  had  provoked  him  with  "their  petulant  styles"  for 
years  "on  the  stage."  In  a  parable  of  the  poetasters  of  ancient 
Rome,  Crispinus  and  Demetrius,  Jonson  contrasts  their 
spleen,  stupidity,  habits  of  literary  theft,  and  their  envy  of 
Vergil  and  Horace,  with  the  virtue,  moral  righteousness,  and 
impeccability  of  these  two,  in  the  latter  of  whom  we  recognize, 
once  more,  Jonson's  favorite  portrait  of  himself.  Jonson  was 
answered  soon  after  by  Dekker  in  his  Satiromastix,  1602, 
which  he  seems  to  have  been  engaged  by  others  to  write. 
Dekker  thus  really  comes  into  the  quarrel  near  to  its  conclusion 
and  the  circumstance  that  Satiromastix  is  clearly  an  unfinished 
play  —  really  of  chronicle  type  and  evidently  altered  in  haste 
for  this  specific  purpose  —  makes  this  the  more  likely.  From 
a  literary  point  of  view,  Satiromastix  can  not  be  pronounced 
a  good  play,  though  clever  and  pointed  enough.  But  the 
arrogance  of  Jonson  and  his  outrageous  self-righteousness 
caused  the  time  to  award  the  palm  to  his  opponents;  and  this 
despite  Jonson's  tremendous  superiority  in  every  quality  that 
goes  to  make  up  effective  dramatic  satire.  The  arrogance 
of  Jonson  reaches  its  height  in  Jn  Apologctical  Dialogue  which 
he  affixed  to  Poetaster,  on  its  publication  in  1602  and  which 
he  declares  was  "only  once  spoken  on  the  stage."  Here  the 
poet  represents  himself  in  conversation  with  two  obsequious 
and  admiring  friends  concerning  his  dramatic  and  other  opin- 
ions and  in  contemptuous,  but  only  too  mindful,  neglect  of 
his  enemies.  It  adds  to  our  wonder  at  the  sublimity  of  Jon- 
son's arrogant  self-esteem  to  learn  that  he  acted  himself,  in 
this  Dialogue,  in  propria  persona.  No  lawsuits,  however, 
appear  to  have  resulted  from  these  vituperative  libels  of  the 
stage.  And  we  find  Jonson  in  friendship  and  collaboration 
with  both  Marston  and  Dekker  a  short  time  after.     Hence 


JONSON  IN  COMEDY  237 

we  may  infer  that  there  was  no  small  amount  of  playing  to 
the  gallery  in  ail  this  dramatic  warfare.  As  a  specimen  of 
Jonson's  swift  satirical  dialogue  in  its  lighter  vein,  let  us  take 
the  following.  Fastidious  Brisk,  "z  neat,  spruce,  affecting 
courtier,  one  that  wears  clothes  well,  and  in  fashion,"  and 
Puntarvolo,  "a  vain-glorious  knight,  wholly  consecrated  to 
singularity,"  are  the  chief  interlocutors.  Carlo  Buffone, 
described  as  "a  good  feast-hound  or  banquet-beagle,"  bears 
a  minor  part. 

Fast.  Good  faith,  signior,  now  you  speak  of  a  quarrel,  I  '11 
acquaint  you  with  a  difference  that  happened  between  a  gallant  and 
myself;  Sir  Puntarvolo,  you  know  him  if  I  should  name  him,  Signior 
Luculento. 

Punt.  Luculento!  What  inauspicious  chance  interposed  itself 
to  your  two  loves  ? 

Fast.  Faith,  sir,  the  same  that  sundered  Agamemnon  and  great 
Thetis'  son;  but  let  the  cause  escape,  sir:  he  sent  me  a  challenge 
mixed  with  some  few  braves,  which  I  restored  and  in  fine  we  met. 
Now,  indeed,  sir,  I  must  tell  you  he  did  offer  at  first  very  desperately 
but  without  judgment:  for,  look  you,  sir,  I  cast  myself  into  this 
figure;  now  he  comes  violently  on,  and  withal  advancing  his  rapier 
to  strike,  I  thought  to  have  took  his  arm,  for  he  had  left  his  whole 
body  to  my  election,  and  I  was  sure  he  could  not  recover  his  guard. 
Sir,  I  missed  my  purpose  in  his  arm,  rashed  his  doublet-sleeve,  ran  him 
close  by  the  left  cheek,  and  through  his  hair.  He  again  lights  me  here, 
—  I  had  on  a  gold  cable  hatband,  then  new  come  up,  which  I  wore 
about  a  murrey  French  hat  I  had,  —  cuts  my  hatband,  and  yet  it 
was  massy  goldsmith's  work,  cuts  my  brims,  which,  by  good  for- 
tune, being  thick  embroidered  with  gold  twist  and  spangles,  dis- 
appointed the  force  of  the  blow:  nevertheless,  it  grazed  on  my  shoul- 
der, takes  me  away  six  purls  of  an  Italian  cut-work  band  I  wore,  cost 
me  three  pound  in  the  Exchange  but  three  days  before. 

Punt.     This  was  a  strange  encounter. 

Fast.  Nay,  you  shall  hear,  sir:  with  this  we  both  fell  out  and 
breathed.  Now,  upon  the  second  sign  of  his  assault,  I  betook  me  to 
the  former  manner  of  my  defence;  he,  on  the  other  side,  abandoned 
his  body  to  the  same  danger  as  before,  and  follows  me  still  with 
blows:  but  I  being  loth  to  take  the  deadly  advantage  that  lay  before 
me  of  his  left  side,  made  a  kind  of  stramazoun,  ran  him  up  to  the  hilts 
through  the  doublet,  through  the  shirt,  and  yet  missed  the  skin. 


238  THE   CLASSICAL   REACTION 

He,  making  a  reverse  blow,  falls  upon  my  embossed  girdle  —  I  had 
thrown  off  the  hangers  before,  —  strikes  off  a  skirt  of  a  thick-laced 
satin  doublet  I  had,  lined  with  some  four  taffetas,  cuts  off  two  panes 
embroidered  with  pearl,  rends  through  the  drawings-out  of  tissue, 
enters  the  linings,  and  skips  the  flesh. 

Car.     I  wonder  he  speaks  not  of  his  wrought  shirt. 

Fast.  Here,  in  the  opinion  of  mutual  damage,  we  paused;  but 
ere  I  proceed  I  must  tell  you,  segnior,  that  in  this  last  encounter  not 
having  leisure  to  put  off  my  silver  spurs,  one  of  the  rowels  catched 
hold  of  the  ruffle  of  my  boot,  and  being  Spanish  leather  and  subject 
to  tear,  overthrows  me,  rends  me  two  pair  of  silk  stockings  that  I 
put  on,  being  somewhat  a  raw  morning,  a  peach  color  and  another, 
and  strikes  me  some  half-inch  deep  into  the  side  of  the  calf;  he,  see- 
ing the  blood  come,  presently  takes  horse  and  away;  I,  having  bound 
up  my  wound  with  a  piece  of  my  wrought  shirt  — 

Car.     O!   comes  it  in  there  ? 

Fast.  Rid  after  him,  and,  lighting  at  the  court  gate,  both  to- 
gether embraced,  and  marched  hand  in  hand  up  into  the  presence. 
Was  not  this  business  well  carried  ? 

A  natural  question  arises  here:  where  was  Shakespeare 
during  all  this  fuss  and  fury  ?  especially  as  we  know  by  a  clear 
passage  in  Hamlet  that  he  was  neither  ignorant  of  the  matter 
nor  without  an  opinion  about  it.  There  is  moreover  an  allu- 
sion to  the  quarrel  in  an  academic  play  called  The  Return 
from  Parnassus  in  which  Shakespeare  is  not  only  suggested 
as  having  taken  a  part  in  the  quarrel  but  is  spoken  of  as  having 
gained  the  better  of  Jonson  in  it.  Still  further,  some  have 
thought  that  Troilus  and  Cresstda,  from  its  bitter  and  satirical 
spirit  (so  unlike  the  Shakespeare  of  earlier  and  later  work)  was 
the  particular  play  in  which  the  great  dramatist  took  his  part 
in  these  petty  broils.  However,  in  view  of  the  circumstance 
that  Dekker's  Satiromastix  was  acted  by  Shakespeare's 
company  in  answer  to  Jonson's  two  satires,  just  performed  by 
the  Children  of  the  Chapel,  it  seems  not  impossible  to  suppose 
this  play,  rather  than  Troilus,  the  one  in  which  Shakespeare 
triumphed,  vicariously  to  be  sure,  over  the  satire  of  the  trucu- 
lent Jonson.  The  passage  in  Hamlet  referring  to  "the  war" 
and  constantly  quoted,  runs  as  follows.  Hamlet  has  heard  of 
the  arrival  of  players  at  Elsinore  and  is  in  conversation  with 


SHAKESPEARE   AND  THE   "WAR"  239 

Rosencrantz    about    them.      He    asks:     "What    players    are 
they?"     And  Rosencrantz  repHes: 

Even  those  you  were  wont  to  take  delight  in,  the  tragedians  of 
the  city. 

Ham.  How  chances  it  they  travel  ^  Their  residence,  both  in 
reputation  and  profit,  was  better  both  ways. 

Ros.  I  think  their  inhibition  comes  by  the  means  of  the  late 
innovation. 

Ham.  Do  they  hold  the  same  estimation  they  did  when  I  was  in 
the  city  'i     Are  they  so  followed  } 

Ros.     No,  indeed  they  are  not. 

Ham.     How  comes  it  ?     Do  they  grow  rusty  ? 

Ros.  Nay,  their  endeavor  keeps  in  the  wonted  pace:  but  there  is, 
sir,  an  aery  of  children,  little  eyases,  that  cry  out  on  the  top  of  question, 
and  are  most  tyrannically  clapped  for  't:  these  are  now  in  fashion, 
and  so  berattle  the  common  stages,  —  so  they  call  them,  —  that 
many  wearing  rapiers  are  afraid  of  goose-quills,  and  dare  scarce 
come  hither. 

Ham.  What!  are  they  children  ?  who  maintains  'em  ?  how  are 
they  escoted  .''  Will  they  pursue  the  quality  no  longer  than  they  can 
sing  ?  will  they  not  say  afterwards,  if  they  should  grow  themselves 
to  common  players,  —  as  it  is  most  like,  if  their  means  are  no  better, 
—  their  writers  do  them  wrong,  to  make  them  exclaim  against  their 
own  succession  ? 

Ros.  Faith,  there  has  been  much  to  do  on  both  sides;  and  the 
nation  holds  it  no  sin  to  tarre  them  to  controversy:  there  was,  for  a 
while,  no  money  bid  for  argument,  unless  the  poet  and  the  player 
went  to  cuffs  in  the  question. 

Hamlet  learns  that  the  regular  troupes  of  the  city  have  suf- 
fered what  amounts  to  an  inhibition  or  order  to  cease  playing, 
because  of  the  extraordinary  popularity  of  an  aery  of  chil- 
dren, that  is  company  of  boy  actors,  who  are  tremendously  ap- 
plauded by  the  public  for  performing  satirical  plays  in  which 
people  are  lampooned  on  the  boards.  And  Hamlet's  question 
— that  is,  Shakespeare's  —  is  not,  Who  are  the  parties  to  the 
quarrel  ?  or,  How  cleverly  have  the  poets  lashed  each  other  ? 
His  thought  is  for  the  little  actors,  and  the  pity  that  they  should 
thus  be  "tarred,"  or  set  on,  to  tear  and  worry,  in  such  a  rivalry, 
their  older  fellows  in  the  profession,  when  it  is  likely  that  they, 


240  THE  CLASSICAL   REACTION 

in  time,  must  succeed  the  very  men  they  are  now  attack- 
ing. It  may  be  questioned  if  Shakespeare's  personal  contri- 
bution to  the  war  of  the  theaters  was  more  than  this  kindly 
admonition. 

Even  a  cursory  examination  of  Elizabethan  plays  discovers 
them  occurring  as  to  kind  and  subject  in  groups  wherein  some 
popular  success  is  emulated  by  rival  dramatists  and  the  same 
or  like  topic  exploited  until  the  public  calls  for  something  new. 
Subjects  derived  from  classical  history  or  myth  had  been  pop- 
ular on  the  stage  almost  from  the  beginning.  The  direct 
suggestion  came  from  Seneca;  and  from  Sackville  to  Kyd  the 
academic  Senecan  line  was  continued,  by  Daniel,  Greville, 
and  the  coterie  that  preserved  the  traditions  of  Sidney,  to  Sir 
William  Alexander  and  his  Monarchic  Tragedies,  in  the  early 
years  of  King  James.  Except  for  Daniel's  Cleopatra  and 
Philotas,  both  of  them  graceful  and  dignified  tragedies,  none 
of  these  plays  were  intended  for  the  stage.  The  whole  group 
appears  to  have  been  influenced  directly  by  the  French  Sen- 
ecan, Robert  Garnier,  and  the  best  of  them  are  the  remarkable 
closet  dramas,  Alaham  and  Mustapha,  strange  yet  attractive 
product  of  the  philosophic  ponderings  of  Sir  Fulke  Greville, 
written  perhaps  before  the  death  of  Elizabeth.  On  the  pop- 
ular stage,  aside  from  such  old  productions  as  Lodge's  Wounds 
of  Civil  War  and  the  anonymous  Wars  of  Cyrus,  which  date 
about  the  time  of  the  Armada,  Marlowe's  Dido,  Queen  of 
Carthage,  printed  in  1594,  was  one  of  the  more  important 
dramas  levying  on  classical  subjects,  a  tragedy  in  which  Nash 
is  alleged  to  have  had  a  hand  and  one  which,  while  far  from 
ranking  with  Marlowe's  greatest  work,  is  no  discredit  to  either 
author.  A  year  or  two  later  came  Heywood's  mythology 
dramatized  in  the  sundry  plays  on  the  four  ages,  already  men- 
tioned;   and  about  1600,  Shakespeare's  Julius  Ccesar. 

It  has  been  observed  that  Shakespeare's  Julius  Ccesar  is 
one  of  the  most  regularly  constructed  of  his  plays.  In  it  he 
seems  to  have  caught  more  nearly  than  elsewhere  the  restraint 
of  the  classical  spirit,  though  great  as  this  tragedy  is  and  full 
of  the  poetry,  the  wisdom,  and  the  power  of  characterization 
that  mark  Shakespeare's  plays  everywhere  more  or  less,  Julius 


JONSON  IN  TRAGEDY  241 

Ccesar  can  not  be  declared,  from  the  antiquarian's  point  of 
view,  an  accurate  or  an  informing  picture  of  ancient  Roman 
life  and  history.  Scholar  and  antiquarian  that  he  was,  the 
faults  of  such  a  production  must  have  impressed  themselves 
on  a  man  like  Jonson;  and  his  Sejanus,  first  acted  in  1603, 
was,  if  not  exactly  a  reply,  at  least  an  expression  of  his  own 
position.  It  seems  from  words  of  Jonson  on  the  publication 
of  Sejanus  two  years  later  that  he  had  had  in  its  first  version 
a  collaborator.  And  he  is  careful  to  have  the  reader  know 
that,  in  printing,  he  has  "rather  chosen  to  put  weaker  and,  no 
doubt,  less  pleasing  [work]  of  mine  own,  than  to  defraud  so 
happy  a  genius  of  his  right  by  my  loathed  usurpation."  Some 
have  thought  the  "second  pen"  Shakespeare's.  At  any  rate 
we  know  from  Jonson's  folio  that  Shakespeare  was  one  of 
"the  principal  actors"  in  Sejanus  and  that,  whatever  its  exact 
circumstances,  the  rivalry  of  these  great  spirits  could  not  have 
been  other  than  a  generous  one.  In  this  tragedy  of  Sejanus, 
as  to  a  lesser  degree  in  his  other  tragedy  dealing  with  classical 
history,  Catiline,  his  Conspiracy,  Jonson  shows  himself  true 
to  the  classical  ideals  and  theories  that  had  always  animated 
him.  The  earlier  play  was  printed  with  elaborate  scholarly 
references  to  authorities  used  in  working  up  his  material.  The 
poet  was  not  unjustly  criticized  for  this  pedantry,  Marston 
slyly  remarking  in  the  preface  to  his  Sophonisha  (another  able 
tragedy  of  this  general  type),  that  "to  transcribe  authors, 
quote  authorities,  and  translate  Latin  prose  orations  into  Eng- 
lish blank-verse,  hath,  in  this  subject,  been  the  least  aim  of  my 
studies."  Sejanus,  with  its  admirable  portrait  study  of  Ti- 
berius, derived  from  Tacitus,  and  Catiline,  using  as  Jonson 
does  in  it  the  materials  of  Sallust's  succinct  account  of  that 
conspiracy,  are  splendid  examples  of  Jonson's  power  prac- 
tically to  apply  his  just  and  reasonable  classical  theories  about 
tragedy  and  literary  art  to  current  English  conditions.  It  is 
not  enough  to  say  that  if  Jonson's  figures  are  the  truer  Romans, 
Shakespeare's  are  the  truer  men.     The  art  of  the  two  is  less      ^^^^^^^^fVi*^^^ 

opposed  than  to  be  contrasted.     To  the  academician  the  free  . L 

art  of  genius  must  always  seem  amazing  and  inexplicable,  as 
it  remains  for  any  rules  that  he  can  apply.     But  the  art  of  the 


.*^ 


242  THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION 

academician  has  its  place  and  deserves  its  praise.  It  is  a  credit 
to  these  men  of  natures  so  diverse  that  they  should  have  es- 
teemed each  other  and  worked  thus  together  to  produce  an 
artistic  result.  And  it  is  an  equal  credit  to  the  age  that  it 
appreciated  both,  although  it  made  Jonson  honored  and  famous 
and  added  riches  only  to  the  more  popular  success  of  Shake- 
speare. 

In  1605  Jonson  produced,  with  the  help  of  Chapman  and 
Marston,  to  whom  he  was  now  fully  reconciled,  one  of  the  best 
comedies  of  London  life  in  the  language.  This  was  Eastward 
Hoe,  a  vivid  picture  of  the  tradesman's  life  presented  in  the 
eternal  contrast  of  the  good  and  the  evil-lived  apprentice. 
Here  the  authors  succeeded  in  hitting  the  happy  mean  be- 
tween purposeless  art  and  moralizing,  even  though  this  comedy 
does  mark  the  climax  of  the  parable  of  the  prodigal  son  in 
English  drama.  Neither  preaching,  allegory,  nor  abstraction 
enter  into  this  comedy  to  mar  its  effect;  and  yet  its  personages 
are  sufficiently  typical  to  have  appealed  to  its  citizen  au- 
ditors as  they  appeal  for  their  truth,  humor,  and  vivacity  to  the 
reader  to-day.  The  play,  too,  is  so  well  knit  and  Its  plan  is 
so  logically  carried  out  that  it  is  impossible  to  determine  the 
conditions  of  this  fortunate  collaboration.  A  passage  con- 
taining satirical  allusions  to  the  Scotch  was  excised  by  order 
of  the  royal  council;  but  as  passages  were  retained  reflecting 
on  the  country  of  the  king's  birth,  Jonson  and  Chapman  were 
arrested  and  sent  to  prison  for  a  time.  In  consequence  of  this 
and  of  the  popularity  of  Eastward  Hoe  on  the  stage,  it  was 
printed  three  times  in  the  year  of  its  first  presentation. 

Volpone,  often  regarded  as  the  most  characteristic  of  the 
comedies  of  Jonson,  was  acted  for  the  first  time  in  1606  It 
marks  in  tone  a  transition  from  the  dramatic  satires  to  the  purer 
comedies  of  contemporary  life  that  follow  a  year  or  so  later. 
Volpone  is  the  story  of  a  Venetian  grandee  and  his  servant 
Mosca,  two  scoundrels  without  a  redeeming  trait.  They  are 
surrounded  by  a  group  of  parasites  and  self-seekers  whose 
discomfiture  at  the  hands  of  cleverer  rascals  than  themselves, 
with  the  final  overthrow  of  these  two,  alone  justifies  the  ethics 
of  the  play.     The  cynical  tone  of  Volpone  and  its  attitude  of 


JONSON  AND  SHAKESPEARE  243 

doubt  as  to  the  existence  of  virtue  in  the  world  raise  the  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  such  a  play  is  comedy  at  all.  Indeed,  its 
method  and  tone  are  wholly  tragic,  although  imprisonment, 
not  death,  overtakes  the  evil-doers.  Jonson's  view  of  comedy 
was  derived  from  the  ancients.  To  him  the  proper  material 
for  comedy  is  to  be  found  in  those  departures  from  ordinary 
conditions,  whether  moral,  social,  or  other,  that  rouse  the 
phlegm  of  the  satirist  and  moralist.  The  world  to  Jonson 
was  made  up  for  the  most  part  of  two  classes,  the  fools  and  the 
knaves.  And  fools  have  been  fair  game  for  the  knave  time 
out  of  mind.  There  is  such  a  thing,  to  be  sure,  as  virtue;  but 
unaccompanied  by  the  protection  of  brains,  it  is  likely  to  be 
little  better  than  folly.  Jonson  can  forgive  anything  but 
stupidity;  and  hence,  Surley,  the  only  respectable  man  in  The 
Alchemist  is  discomfited,  and  that  graceless  scamp.  Face,  for- 
given for  his  wit  and  success.  It  is  somewhat  strange  that  a 
man  like  Jonson,  whose  whole  nature  was  grounded  in  a  rig- 
orous conception  of  moral  ideas,  should  thus  fail  where  Shake- 
speare and  Dekker,  careless  observers  of  life  as  it  is,  succeed 
by  an  unerring  instinct.  But  Shakespeare's  appeal  is  almost 
always  to  the  heart;  Jonson's  to  the  head  and  the  critical 
understanding.  Shakespeare's  plots  are  made  up  of  events 
generally  beyond  the  control  or  even  guidance  of  those  whom 
they  concern;  and  they  involve  in  consequence  an  ebb  and 
flow  of  passion  with  a  resulting  development  or  degeneracy 
in  character.  Jonson's  plots  on  the  contrary  are  a  fabric  of 
contrivances  and  devices,  controlled  by  the  cleverness  and  in- 
genuity of  the  characters  of  the  play.  In  place  of  an  ebb  and 
flow  of  emotion,  we  have  a  struggle  of  wit,  a  play  of  mind 
against  mind;  and  the  characteristics  of  a  personage  once 
determined,  he  remains  the  same  to  the  end. 

After  Volpone,  Jonson  gave  up  foreign  scene  for  comedy. 
He  even  transferred  the  locale  of  Every  Man  in  his  Humor, 
in  his  revision  of  that  play  for  his  folio,  from  Florence  to  Lon- 
don, transforming  Signior  Lorenzo  di  Pazzi  to  Old  Know'ell, 
Prospero  to  Master  Welborn,  Biancha  to  Mistress  Bridget 
and  Hesperida  to  Dame  Kitely,  dwelling  "i'  the  Old  Jewry." 
The  Silent  Woman  and  The  Alchemist,  1609  and  16 10.  with 


244  THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION 

Bartholomew  Fair,  1 6 14,  represent  Jonson  at  his  very  best  in 
comedies  of  the  life  of  his  native  town.  Jonson  knew  his 
London  as  well  as  his  namesake,  Dr.  Johnson,  in  the  age  of 
the  Georges;  for  satirist  and  moralist  that  the  elder  author 
was,  he  never  forgot  that  the  material  for  the  drama  is  obtained 
primarily  in  the  actual  characteristics  of  people  about  you. 
The  Alchemist  details  the  doings  of  three  sharpers  who  set  up 
in  a  house,  vacated  for  the  time  by  reason  of  the  plague,  an 
alchemical  furnace  and  by  this  and  other  means  fool  and  cheat 
as  many  gulls  as  they  can  decoy  thither.  Their  victims  are, 
for  the  most  part,  contributary  to  their  own  undoing  by  their 
folly  and  wickedness  and,  in  the  denouement.  Face,  the  clever 
servant,  prime  mover  of  all  villainy,  is  forgiven  and  a  widow 
married  out  of  hand  after  a  manner  known  only  to  Roman 
comedy.  The  Silent  Woman  turns  on  the  trick  of  Delphine, 
a  knavish  nephew,  to  regain  his  position  as  heir  to  his  uncle, 
in  the  process  of  which  his  uncle,  who  detests  noise,  is  driven 
almost  frantic  and  a  marriage  (that  he  has  planned  to  dis- 
inherit his  nephew)  is  frustrated  by  the  discovery  that  the  wife 
is  neither  "silent"  nor  a  woman,  but  an  exceedingly  noisy  boy. 
Even  slighter  is  the  general  fabric  of  the  visit  of  Zeal-in-the- 
Land  Busy,  immortal  Puritan,  with  his  companions,  to  Bar- 
tholomew Fair,  with  the  adventures  that  there  befell  them. 
Yet  for  clever  plotting,  for  ingenuity  of  situation,  sustained 
wit  of  dialogue,  and  humor  in  the  conception  of  character 
and  incident  these  comedies  of  Jonson  have  never  been  sur- 
passed. Their  age  acclaimed  them  and  imitated  them  again 
and  again;  and  they  held  the  stage  as  long  as  the  comedies 
of  Shakespeare  and  Fletcher,  and  after. 

The  rest  of  the  plays  of  Jonson,  except  for  a  comedy  called 
The  Devil  is  an  Ass,  that  failed  on  the  stage  in  the  year  of 
Shakespeare's  death,  were  not  written  until  after  the  accession 
of  King  Charles  in  1625.  They  were  called  by  Dryden  "Jon- 
son's  dotages,"  which  is  not  fair;  none  the  less  The  Staple  of 
News,  The  New  Inn,  and  The  Magnetic  Lady  are  certainly 
vastly  inferior  to  his  dramatic  satires,  his  comedies,  or  the  two 
Roman  tragedies.     But,  great  as  was  Jonson's  activity  in  the 


THE   POETRY  OF  JONSON  245 

composition  of  his  score  of  originally  devised  and  closely 
written  dramas  for  the  popular  stage,  this  represents  only  one 
side  of  his  busy  career.  Of  his  masques,  their  inventiveness 
and  poetic  beauty,  we  must  write  in  a  later  chapter.  He  was 
the  acknowledged  leader,  as  poet  laureate,  of  those  who  found 
their  livelihood  in  entertaining  the  court  of  King  James.  And 
this  primacy  of  his  extended  into  the  next  reign.  In  criticism, 
Jonson  was  easily  the  first,  and  what  he  taught  by  precept  he 
exemplified  in  a  wide  and  various  practice.  Jonson's  non- 
dramatic  poetry  includes  lyrics,  among  them  a  few  sonnets 
(though  he  did  not  love  the  form),  satirical  verse,  chiefly  in  the 
shape  of  epigrams  and  mock  poems,  and  a  large  amount  of 
occasional  verse  for  the  most  part  made  up  of  epistles,  epitaphs, 
and  dedicatory  poems;  for  Jonson  was  on  terms  of  intimacy 
with  all  the  authors  and  half  the  nobility  of  his  time.  The 
author  grouped  these  works  under  the  headings  Epigrams  and 
The  Forest  and  published  both  in  the  folio  of  16 16  to  which 
he  gave  his  careful  personal  attention.  A  third  group  (of  mis- 
cellaneous poems)  doubtless  also  of  his  making,  appears  in 
print  for  the  first  time  in  the  posthumous  second  volume  of  his 
collected  works,  bearing  date  1640,  and  is  there  designated 
Underii'oods. 

In  turning  to  the  non-dramatic  poetry  of  Jonson,  especially 
to  his  lyrical  poetry,  the  first  thing  that  we  note  is  a  sense  of 
form,  not  merely  detail  and  transition,  like  the  "links,  bright 
and  even"  of  The  Faery  Queen,  but  a  sense  of  the  entire  poem 
in  its  relation  to  its  parts.  This  sense  involves  brevity  and 
condensity  of  expression,  a  feeling  on  the  part  of  the  poet  that 
the  effect  may  be  spoiled  by  a  word  too  much,  a  feeling  notably 
in  contrast  with  the  diffuseness,  the  continuousness  and  want 
of  concentration  characteristic  of  the  Spenserian  mode  of  the 
day.  Jonson  is  writing  in  courtly  compliment  to  his  patroness 
Lucy,  Countess  of  Bedford: 

This  morning  timely  rapt  with  holy  fire, 
I  thought  to  form  unto  my  zealous  Muse, 
What  kind  of  creature  I  should  most  desire, 
To  honor,  serve,  and  love,  as\  poets  use. 


246  THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION 

I  meant  to  make  her  fair,  and  free,  and  wise, 
Of  greatest  blood,  and  yet  more  good  than  great; 
I  meant  the  day-star  should  not  brighter  rise, 
Nor  lend  like  influence  from  his  lucent  seat. 
I  meant  she  should  be  courteous,  facile,  sweet. 
Hating  that  solemn  vice  of  greatness,  pride; 
I  meant  each  softest  virtue  there  should  meet. 
Fit  in  that  softer  bosom  to  reside. 
Only  a  learned  and  a  manly  soul 
I  purposed  her;  that  should,  with  even  powers. 
The  rock,  the  spindle,  and  the  shears  control 
Of  Destiny,  and  spin  her  own  free  hours. 
Such  when  I  meant  to  feign  and  wished  to  see, 
My  Muse  bade  Bedford  write,  and  that  was  she. 

About  such  poetry  as  this  there  is  a  sense  of  finish  rather 
than  of  elaboration.  It  is  less  continuous  than  complete; 
more  concentrated,  less  diffuse;  chaste  rather  than  florid; 
controlled,  and  yet  not  alw^ays  less  spontaneous;  reserved, 
and  yet  not  always  less  natural.  There  are  other  things  in 
the  Jonsonian  manner.  It  retained  classical  allusion  less  for 
the  sake  of  embellishment  than  as  an  atmosphere  —  to  borrow 
a  term  from  the  nomenclature  of  art.  Its  drafts  on  ancient 
mythology  become  allusive,  and  the  effects  produced  by  Hor- 
ace, Catullus,  or  Anacreon  are  essayed  in  reproduction  under 
English  conditions.  Not  less  eager  in  the  pursuit  of  beauty 
than  the  Spenserian,  the  manner  of  Jonson  seeks  to  realize 
her  perfections  by  means  of  constructive  excellence,  not  by 
entranced  passion.  It  concerns  itself  with  choiceness  of 
diction,  selectiveness  in  style,  with  the  repression  of  wandering 
ideas  and  loosely  conceived  figures,  —  in  a  word,  the  manner  of 
Jonson  involves  classicality.  Sidney's  return  to  the  ancients 
has  been  called  empirical;  the  classicism  of  Jonson  may  be 
termed  assimilative. 

It  is  thus  that  Jonson  turns  a  lyric: 

Still  to  be  neat,  still  to  be  drest, 
As  you  were  going  to  a  feast; 
Still  to  be  powdered,  still  perfumed: 
Lady,  it  is  to  be  presumed, 


THE   POETRY  OF  JONSON  247 

Though  art's  hid  causes  are  not  found, 
All  is  not  sweet,  all  is  not  sound. 

Give  me  a  look,  give  me  a  face, 
That  makes  simplicity  a  grace; 
Robes  loosely  flowing,  hair  as  free: 
Such  sweet  neglect  more  taketh  me 
Than  all  th'  adulteries  of  art; 
They  strike  mine  eyes,  but  not  my  heart. 

And  in  this  wise  he  fashions  two  stanzas  of  an  "Ode,"  one  of 
the  noblest  of  his  many  fine  poems  addressed  to  his  notable 
friends  of  the  day: 

He  stood  a  soldier  to  the  last  right  end, 
A  perfect  patriot  and  a  noble  friend, 
But  most  a  virtuous  son. 
All  offices  were  done 
By  him  so  ample,  full,  and  round. 
In  weight,  in  measure,  number,  sound. 
As,  though  his  age  imperfect  might  appear, 
His  life  was  of  humanity  the  sphere. 

It  is  not  growing  like  a  tree 

In  bulk,  doth  make  men  better  be; 
Or  standing  long  an  oak,  three  hundred  year, 
To  fall  a  log  at  last,  dry,  bald,  and  sear: 
A  lily  of  a  day 
Is  fairer  far  in  May, 

Although  it  fall  and  die  that  night; 

It  was  the  plant  and  flower  of  light. 
In  small  proportions  we  just  beauties  see; 
And  in  short  measures  life  may  perfect  be. 

In  gnomic  thought  and  moralizing,  such  as  this  or  the  noble 
Epode  beginning,  "Not  to  know  vice  at  all,"  we  have  Jonson 
lyrically  at  his  best,  if  such  passages  be  strictly  lyrical  and  not 
rather  epigrammatic  in  the  larger  classical  sense.  The  Epi- 
grams of  Jonson  are  full  of  cleverness  and  agile  wit,  and  several 
playful  poems,  such  as  "A  Fit  of  Rime  against  Rime"  or 
"The  Execration  against  Vulcan,"  are  possessed  of  a  light- 
someness  and  raillery,  as  his  epitaphs  declare  a  humane  tender- 


248  THE  CLASSICAL  REACTION 

ness,  such  as  we  could  hardly  expect  of  the  trenchant  author 
of  Poetaster. 

We  have  seen  how  classical  were  Jonson's  ideas  as  to  the 
drama.  This  was  only  the  most  conspicuous  example  of  the 
wider  tenets  that  he  held  concerning  literature  at  large.  From 
his  works  and  especially  from  his  avowed  opinions,  expressed 
in  his  Conversations  with  Drummond  and  carefully  noted 
down  by  that  poet  at  the  time,  we  learn  that  Jonson  believed 
in  the  criticism  of  Horace  and  in  the  rhetoric  of  Quintilian; 
in  the  sanction  of  classical  usage  for  history,  oratory,  and 
poetry;  and  that  an  English  ode  should  be  modeled  faith- 
fully on  the  structural  niceties  of  Pindar.  Despite  all  this, 
Jonson's  theories  about  literature  were  not  only,  in  the  main, 
reasonable  and  consistent,  they  were  often  surprisingly  liberal. 
Thus  he  could  laugh,  as  he  did,  in  a  well-known  passage  of 
the  prologue  to  Every  Man  in  his  Humor,  at  the  absurdities 
of  contemporary  stage  realism  which, 

with  three  rusty  swords, 
And  help  of  some  few  foot-and-half-foot  words, 
Fight  over  York  and  Lancaster's  long  jars; 
And  in  the  tiring-house  bring  wounds  to  scars; 

and  yet  declare,  as  to  that  fetish  of  the  supine  classicist,  the 
three  unities,  that  "we  [English  playwrights]  should  enjoy 
the  same  licence  or  free  power  to  illustrate  and  heighten  our 
invention  as  they  [the  ancients]  did;  and  not  be  tied  to  those 
strict  and  regular  forms  which  the  niceness  of  a  few,  who  are 
nothing  but  form,  would  thrust  upon  us."  He  could  affirm 
that  "Spenser's  stanzas  pleased  him  not,  nor  his  matter";  and 
yet  tell  Drummond  that  "for  a  heroic  poem  there  was  no  such 
ground  as  King  Arthur's  fiction."  He  censured  the  pastoral- 
ists  for  their  unreality,  and  yet  he  had  by  heart  passages  of  the 
Shepherds^  Calendar  and  showed  how  he  thought  that  a  true 
pastoral  drama  should  be  written  in  the  Sad  Shepherd;  he 
mocked  the  sonneteers,  especially  Daniel,  in  his  satirical  plays, 
for  their  sugared  sweetness  and  frivolity;  but  wrote  himself 
some  of  the  finest  lyrics  of  his  age.  The  catholicity  of  Jonson's 
taste  in  its  sympathy  included  the  philosophy  and  eloquence 


JONSON  THE  CLASSICIST  249 

of  Lord  Bacon,  the  divinity  of  Hooker,  the  historical  and  anti- 
quarian inquiries  of  Camden  and  Selden,  the  classical  scholar- 
ship of  Chapman,  and  the  poetry  of  such  diverse  men  as 
Spenser,  Father  Southwell,  Donne,  Sandys,  Herrick,  Carew, 
and  his  lesser  "sons." 

With  consistent  theories  such  as  these  applied  with  liber- 
ality, with  catholicity  of  taste,  and  the  force  of  a  strong  and 
confident  nature  such  as  was  his,  we  can  not  wonder  at  Jon- 
son's  influence  on  his  time,  the  more  particularly  that  the  wild 
and  inconsiderate  spirit  of  much  Elizabethan  poetry  laid  itself 
only  too  readily  open  to  criticism  for  its  amateurishness  and 
apparent  want  of  any  serious  purpose  in  art.  Further  into 
the  qualities  that  distinguish  Jonson  as  a  classicist — his 
habitual  practice  of  occasional  verse,  his  trend  towards  a  pre- 
cise, pointed,  and  antithetical  diction,  his  Latinized  vocab- 
ulary, and  his  preference  for  the  decasyllablic  couplet  over  all 
other  kinds  of  verse,  we  need  not  look  further  here.  To  Jon- 
son must  be  granted  the  credit  of  setting  a  standard  of  literary 
excellence,  not  recognized  before  his  time;  and  of  assuming, 
in  so  doing,  an  attitude  of  independence  towards  the  public. 
Jonson  developed  the  masque,  as  we  shall  see,  and  devised  a 
species  of  Roman  tragedy,  conceived  historically  and  freed 
alike  from  the  restrictions  of  Senecan  models  and  the  improb- 
abilities of  romantic  treatment.  He  added  the  comedy  of 
humors  to  the  forms  of  the  English  drama.  And  it  was  this 
satirically  heightened  picture  of  contemporary  life,  handled 
with  a  restraint  and  finish  ultimately  traceable  to  classical 
example,  that  survived  on  the  stage  after  the  Restoration  in 
the  comedies  of  Davenant,  Dryden,  Etheridge  and  Vanbrugh.  j 
Thus  it  was  that  Jonson  gave  to  the  later  drama  one  of  its  two 
permanent  types;  and,  displaying  the  tastes  and  ideals  that 
came,  in  still  more  restricted  form,  to  rule  English  literature 
in  the  age  of  Dryden  and  Pope,  set  the  channel  in  which  Eng- 
lish poetry  was  to  run  for  three  generations  as  the  founder  of 
what  is  known  as  the  classical  school  of  English  poetry. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

SHAKESPEARE,   WEBSTER,   AND   THE    HEYDAY 
OF    ROMANTIC   TRAGEDY 

THE  range  and  variety  of  Elizabethan  tragedy  is  almost 
that  of  the  entire  drama  itself;  for  religious,  historical, 
and  classical  subjects,  all  find  place  among  the  tragic  plays 
of  the  age,  as  well  as  the  romantic  biography  and  fiction  that 
are  levied  on  as  their  more  usual  sources.  In  previous  pages 
of  this  book  the  beginnings  of  tragedy  have  been  traced  from 
its  earliest  examples  in  regular  form,  derived  as  they  vs^ere 
from  Seneca,  to  its  realization  in  The  Spanish  Tragedy  and 
in  the  greater  w^orks  of  Marlowe.  The  murder  play,  too, 
has  been  described;  and  its  cruelty  and  crass  realism  found 
to  have  developed  in  Arden  of  Feversham  into  one  example,  at 
least,  deserving  a  place  beside  the  triumphs  of  contrasted 
romantic  art.  But  these  were  not  all  the  varieties  of  earlier 
Elizabethan  tragedy;  even  the  chronicle  play,  epic  and  often 
dramatically  formless  that  it  was,  developed  in  the  hands  of 
Marlowe  and  Shakespeare  into  tragedy  of  a  hig)^r  type  and 
rose,  in  Edward  II,  in  Richard  II,  and  elsewhere,  to  a  place 
beside  romantic  tragedy  at  its  best. 

There  is  no  one  influence  in  English  tragedy  so  abiding 
and  pervasive  as  that  of  the  Roman  poet  Seneca.  Without 
repeating  what  has  already  been  suggested,  it  may  be  remarked 
that  the  early  selection  of  Seneca,  rather  than  the  superior 
examples  of  ancient  tragedy  which  .^schylus,  Sophocles,  and 
Euripides  offer,  was  due  to  several  considerations.  First, 
Seneca  was  nearer  to  hand  and  he  wrote  in  Latin,  the  universal 
language  of  the  learning  and  diplomacy  of  the  age.  Secondly, 
Seneca's  moral  purpose,  or  at  least  his  love  of  gnomic  moral- 
izing and  putting  the  commonplace  of  obvious  comment  into 
the  mouths  of  his  personages,  fell  in  well  with  the  ideas  of  a 
time  that  had  not  yet  learned  to  accept  poetry  and  the  drama 
as  things   properly  existent  without  an   ulterior  moral  end. 

250 


"TITUS  ANDRONICUS"  251 

Lastly,  Seneca  was  the  most  modern  of  the  ancients  and  the 
most  romantic  of  the  classics;  and  his  blood  and  revenge, 
his  ghosts,  furies,  and  horrors,  were  dear  to  an  age  which,  how- 
ever nice  its  appreciation  of  the  more  spiritual  qualities  of  art, 
clung  none  the  less  to  the  robust,  the  virile,  and  the  actual 
quite  as  tenaciously  as  the  times  that  went  before  and  those 
that   have  come  after. 

The  earliest  influences  on  Shakespeare  in  tragedy  were 
those  of  Kyd  and  Marlowe.  We  may  not  like  to  think  of 
Shakespeare  as  the  author  or  even  the  reviser  of  Titus  An- 
dronicus;  for  the  subject  is  horrible,  the  treatment  often 
uninspired  and  blatant.  But  this  tragedy  is  neither  wanting 
in  promise  nor  devoid  of  many  touches  that  suggest  the  hand 
and  heart  of  Shakespeare.  If  we  are  to  seek  for  any  solution 
of  the  enigma  of  Shakespeare's  genius,  we  must  expect  just 
such  crudity,  such  unawakened  sensibilities,  such  want  of 
taste  as  we  find  in  Titus  of  the  inexperienced  Stratford  lad. 
Titus  Andronicus  is  precisely  the  kind  of  a  play  that  a  young 
dramatist  of  talent  might  write  in  his  imitative  period,  over- 
doing the  lust,  the  cruelty,  and  the  blood  of  his  subject  in  his 
endeavor  to  succeed,  and  from  the  very  circumstance  that  these 
things  were  so  remote  from  his  own  intellectual  preoccupa- 
tions. That  the  style  and  the  manner  of  Greene,  Peele,  Kyd, 
and  other  authors  have  been  found  in  it  scarcely  weakens  the 
probability  of  its  writing  by  Shakespeare;  and  the  circumstance 
that  the  subject  was  popular  (recurring  in  Henslowe  under 
variations  of  title  in  1591  and  1593,  in  a  German  version 
derived  from  a  contemporary  English  play,  and  later  in  a 
Dutch  version)  merely  adds  to  the  likelihood  of  Shakespeare's 
choice  of  it.  Titus  is  a  horrible  and  tasteless  tragedy,  showing 
none  the  less  in  the  quality  of  its  diction  and  in  its  powerful 
conception  of  such  personages  as  Aaron  and  Tamora  unusual 
dramatic  promise. 

Titus  must  certainly  have  been  on  the  stage  before  1594, 
in  February  of  which  year  the  recently  rediscovered  first 
quarto   was    registered    for   publication.^     Romeo  and  Juliet, 

^  The  only  exemplar  of  this  quarto  was  discovered  among  the 
books  of  a  Swedish  gentleman  of  Scottish  descent,  named  Robson, 
at  Lund,  Sweden,  in  1905. 


252      THE  HEYDAY  OF  TRAGEDY 

whether  dated  back  to  1591  or  left  at  1596  or  1597,  must  not 
only  have  followed  Titus,  but,  if  taste,  growth  of  power  and 
restraint,  and  grasp  of  dramatic  situation  mean  anything, 
some  time  must  have  elapsed  between  the  two  tragedies. 
Whatever  Shakespeare's  actual  source  for  Romeo  arid  Juliet, 
the  subject  had  long  been  popular  on  the  stage  and  in  current 
poetry  and  fiction;  so  that  here,  as  so  often,  Shakespeare 
becomes  the  artistic  form-giver  to  a  theme  already  well  known 
and  accepted.  Inevitable  tragedy  though  it  is,  Romeo  and 
Juliet  is  written  in  the  exuberant  and  poetical  spirit  that  ani- 
mates A  M idsummer-N i g ht' s  Dream  and  The  Merchant  of 
Venice;  and  youthful  and  untamed  though  this  spirit  is,  we 
have  in  it  abundant  promise  of  much  that  was  to  come.  In 
this  great  tragedy  of  adolescence,  especially  as  we  compare  it 
with  other  examples  of  plays  the  theme  of  which  is  love,  we 
are  struck  by  Shakespeare's  naturalness,  the  simple  adequacy 
of  his  art,  the  poetry  and  clearness  of  his  picture  of  human 
passion,  and  the  genial  play  of  his  humor  about  a  theme  easily 
capable  of  degeneration  into  sentimentality  in  the  hands  of  a 
less  skilful  artist.  In  Juliet  we  have  for  the  first  time  to  the 
full  Shakespeare's  unparalleled  insight  into  womanhood  and 
his  recognition  of  the  glory  of  her  love.  The  true  theme  is 
Juliet's  passion;  Romeo's  is  paltry  in  comparison.  Love 
clears  Juliet's  vision  as  to  all  things  and,  left  to  her  pru- 
dence, her  daring,  her  devotion,  all  had  gone  well.  It  is 
Romeo's  eyes  that  are  blind,  and  it  is  he  that  plunges  distracted 
to  the  catastrophe. 

By  the  time  that  Shakespeare  again  turned  his  attention 
to  tragedy,  he  had  completed,  save  for  Henry  VIII,  his  list 
of  chronicle  plays  and  now  chose  a  subject  from  ancient  history 
in  a  sense  kindred  to  them.  The  Tragedy  of  Julius  C(ssar 
has  been  variously  placed  as  to  date  of  composition  between 
1599  and  1601.  Whether  he  used  some  now  lost  play  or  not, 
the  dramatist's  immediate  source  was  the  latter  part  of  North's 
Plutarch,  which  alone  accounts  for  the  unheroic  character 
given  to  the  dictator,  as  Caesar's  greatness  and  his  exploits 
belong  to  his  earlier  career.  The  play,  indeed,  is  less  the 
tragedy  of  Caesar  than  that  of  Brutus,  whom  Shakespeare  did 


SHAKESPEARE  AND  JONSON  253 

not  hesitate  to  present  in  a  light  far  more  favorable  to  his 
honesty,  his  disinterestedness,  and  kindness  of  heart  than 
appears  in  the  pages  of  Plutarch.  In  choosing  thus  the  story 
of  the  fall  of  the  greatest  man  of  antiquity  Shakespeare  was 
attempting  nothing  novel.  The  subject  had  been  treated  ori 
the  stage  by  Gosson,  by  henchmen  of  Henslowe  more  than 
once,  and  at  Oxford;  and  the  source  had  been  long  since 
broached  for  other  purposes,  by  Lodge  for  example  in  his 
JVounds  of  Civil  JVar,  as  far  back  as  1588.  The  suggestion 
of  a  regulative  example  in  Jonson  for  this  play  of  Shakespeare's 
on  Julius  Caesar  has  been  made  above.  But  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  Jonson's  own  labors  in  this  kind  followed  Shake- 
speare's tragedy.  Whatever  their  relation,  nothing  could  be 
greater  than  their  contrast,  for  in  Shakespeare  the  dramatist 
ruled,  in  Jonson  the  scholar.  Neither  of  these  great  authors 
treated  ancient  history  after  the  melodramatic  manner  of 
Seneca,  for  even  Jonson,  with  all  his  veneration  of  the  an- 
cients, never  tied  —  save  in  the  fiction  of  text-books  —  to  the 
strict  laws  that  governed  their  art.  But  Jonson  was  solicitous 
of  historical,  biographical,  and  archaeological  truth.  Hence 
he  studied  his  originals  with  care  and  followed  them  with  the 
scholar's  fidelity.  Shakespeare  sought  for  a  higher  truth 
than  these;  and  as  artistic  truth  —  not  historical,  biographi- 
cal, or  archaeologic  —  is  the  truth  of  the  drama,  his  work 
abides  the  touch  of  time  as  Jonson's  never  could.  Shake- 
speare's 'Julius  CcEsar,  which  was  an  immediate  success, 
revived  an  interest  in  classical  topics  and  not  only  did  Jonson's 
Sejanus  follow  in  1603,  but  Marston's  Sophonisba,  Heywood's 
Rape  of  Lucrece,  and  Gwinne's  Latin  tragedy  Nero,  all  belong 
to  the  same  year.  The  first  of  these  is  a  romantic  drama  of 
conglomerate  type  of  no  small  merit;  Heywood's  play  adds 
little  to  his  credit;  Dr.  Matthew  Gwinne's  Nero  is  an  ambi- 
tious work  dedicated  to  the  queen  and  true  to  all  the  theories 
cherished  by  Jonson. 

Although  Shakespeare  turned  to  subjects  for  tragedy  more 
truly  romantic  in  the  interim,  he  was  drawn  into  other  plays 
of  this  type  a  few  years  later  by  a  second  revival  of  interest  in 
ancient  story.     To  the  year  1607  belong  two  plays  on  Caesar 


254      THE  HEYDAY  OF  TRAGEDY 

and  Pompey,  the  one  anonymous,  the  other  by  Chapman,  and 
likewise  an  EngHsh  college  play  on  Nero.  And  this  year,  or 
one  or  two  thereafter,  saw  Timon  of  Athens,  Antony  and 
Cleopatra,  Pericles,  and  Coriolanus  as  well.  These  plays 
group  naturally  together  from  their  setting  in  ancient  times. 
Their  general  source  (save  for  Pericles)  is  Plutrach's  Lives. 
But  they  differ  widely  in  their  minor  sources,  in  the  terms  of 
their  authorship,  and  in  their  relative  qualities  and  excellence. 
Pericles  is  a  romance  of  adventure  and  belongs  elsewhere. 
Timon,  even  more  than  Pericles,  is  a  work  of  great  inequality 
and  inconceivable  as  wholly  from  the  hand  of  Shakespeare. 
In  this  story  of  hopeless  misanthropy  the  dialogue  of  Lucian 
concerning  Timon,  and  perhaps  an  earlier  academic  play, 
may  have  served  for  suggestions.  It  has  even  been  doubted 
whether  Timon  of  Athens  was  ever  staged,  and  its  place  in  the 
folio  and  the  corruption  of  the  text  in  places  cast  further  sus- 
picion upon  it.  With  Antony  and  Cleopatra  and  with  Corio- 
lanus we  are  on  firmer  ground.  The  latter,  on  the  stage  by 
1609,  is  a  clearly  conceived  tragedy  turning  on  a  definite 
theme,  the  arrogant  pride  of  Coriolanus,  and  developed  with 
an  artist's  sense  of  the  effectiveness  of  a  single  tone.  It  adds 
to  our  appreciation  of  this  emphasis  of  effect  to  learn  that 
the  characteristics  of  Coriolanus  are  merely  suggested  in  Plu- 
tarch's narrative.  Shakespeare's  misinterpretation  of  history 
in  making  "the  dignified  secession  of  the  plebs"  a  turbulent 
mob,  is  thus  justified  by  the  dramatic  demands  of  his  subject 
as  he  conceives  it.  It  is  difficult  to  sympathize  with  the  criti- 
cism that  objects  to  Shakespeare's  contemptuous  representa- 
tion of  the  mob  in  this  tragedy  and  in  Julius  Ccesar.  The 
drift  and  average  of  mankind  in  leaderless  fluxion  has  always 
been  fickle,  stupid,  and  disorderly;  and  it  requires  more  than 
seeing  things  as  they  are  to  wax  eloquent  on  the  virtues  and 
prudence  of  men  when  they  herd  in  the  streets.  Shakespeare, 
though  country  born,  saw  countrymen,  rustic  and  the  popu- 
lace of  London,  ignorant  and  uncleanly;  and  he  sacrificed  no 
jot  or  tittle  of  the  concrete  truth  to  lofty  generalizations  on 
that  figment  of  the  imagination,  the  average  man. 

Just  as  we  found  Shakespeare  raising  the  chronicle  history 


"ANTONY  AND  CLEOPATRA"  255 

out  of  its  species  into  a  tragedy  of  world  significance,  so  in 
this  matter  of  ancient  history  he  rises  above  the  trammels  of 
his  sources  in  Julius  Ceesar  and  in  Antony  and  Cleopatra. 
This  last  remarkable  tragedy  is  less  an  historical  drama  on 
the  days  of  ancient  Rome  than  a  glorification  of  the  time-worn 
fable  which  has  converted  the  infatuation  of  an  elderly  de- 
bauchee for  a  royal  light-o'-love  into  one  of  the  supreme  love 
stories  of  all  time.  In  Shakespeare's  hands  Cleopatra  holds 
our  sympathy  and,  what  is  more,  our  respect.  It  is  only 
necessary  to  compare  this  impetuous,  variable,  and  fascinating 
serpent  of  the  Nile  with  the  Senecan  frigidity  of  Daniel's 
picture  of  the  Egyptian  queen  in  his  Cleopatra,  1593,  or  the 
painted  meretrix  that  Fletcher  later  made  of  her  in  The  False 
One,  to  realize  to  the  full  the  strength  of  Shakespeare's  por- 
trait. Dryden,  too,  attempted  a  dramatic  portrait  of  Cleo- 
patra in  his  All  for  Love;  and  in  emulating  Shakespeare,  sur- 
passed himself;  but  he  did  no  more.  Depth,  fullness  of  thought 
and  impetuous  imagery,  all  are  qualities  of  Shakespeare's 
Antony  and  Cleopatra  and  it  matters  little  that  the  scene  is 
changed  at  will  (fifteen  times  in  the  fourth  act)  and  that  con- 
structively the  drama  straggles  almost  to  the  degree  of  a 
chronicle  play.  Julius  Ccesar  and  Coriolanus  are  better  con- 
structed tragedies;  but  Shakespeare  is  seldom  at  his  best 
under  restraint  and  there  is  a  larger  utterance,  a  wider  horizon 
in  Antony  and  Cleopatra  than  in  these  earlier  tragedies  deal- 
ing with  classical  story. 

In  our  endeavor  to  keep  the  tragedies  of  similar  subject 
together  we  have  advanced  beyond  the  heyday  of  romantic 
tragedy.  Let  us  return  to  the  later  years  of  Queen  Elizabeth 
and  to  another  topic.  When  Marlowe  died  he  left  behind 
him  a  play  called  The  Massacre  at  Paris  in  which  the  conse- 
quences, rather  than  the  terrible  event,  of  the  massacre  of  St. 
Bartholomew  are  set  forth  for  the  stage,  and  the  Duke  of 
Guise  is  gibbeted  as  a  monster  of  wickedness.  This  lead, 
thus  apparently  for  the  first  time  pointed  out.  Chapman 
followed  in  some  five  dramas  of  tragic  import  and,  although 
unequal,  of  a  very  real  merit.  Of  Chapman  we  shall  hear 
more  fully  in  the  next  chapter  when  we  reach  a  considera- 


256      THE  HEYDAY  OF  TRAGEDY 

tion  of  his  famous  translation  of  Homer.  For  the  present 
it  is  enough  to  recall  that  Chapman's  beginnings  as  a  drama- 
tist date  at  least  as  far  back  as  those  of  Jonson  and  that  his 
earliest  plays  were  comedies  of  disguse,  intrigue,  and  humors 
in  the  Jonsonian  sense.  In  1607  Bussy  D'Jmbois  was 
printed  for  the  first  time,  though  certainly  much  earlier 
written.  This  tragedy  tells  the  story  of  an  impoverished 
bravo  who  became  a  favorite  of  Henry  HI,  and  sets 
forth  at  large  the  tangled  intrigues  and  dissolute  life  of  the 
court  of  that  despicable  monarch.  This  play  was  doubtless 
written  far  earlier,  if  it  does  not  link  even  more  closely  on  to 
The  Massacre  at  Paris  and  The  Civil  Wars  in  France,  three 
plays  of  1598  by  Dekker  and  others,  long  since  lost.  In  1604 
Chapman  wrote  and  staged,  under  influence  of  the  popularity 
of  the  tragedy  of  revenge,  a  continuation  of  Bussy,  entitled 
The  Revenge  of  Bussy  D'Amhois,  wherein  that  worthy's 
brother  Cleremont,  "a  Senecal  man,"  as  the  author  calls  him, 
of  misanthropic  Hamlet  type,  figures  as  hero  and  avenger. 
Four  years  later  appeared  a  more  extensive  work.  The  Con- 
spiracy and  Tragedy  of  Charles  Duke  of  Byron,  a  drama  in  two 
parts,  on  French  history  almost  contemporary.  On  complaint 
of  the  French  ambassador  that  his  royal  master  was  represented 
on  the  stage  in  this  production,  the  performance  of  it  was 
stopped,  and  the  author  driven  into  hiding  to  escape  arrest. 
When  all  was  done,  Chapman  failed  to  secure  permission  to 
publish  his  work  in  its  completeness,  and  it  remains,  a  testi- 
mony of  the  efficacy  of  the  censorship  of  its  day.  Byron's 
story  is  that  of  the  treason  of  an  arrogant  and  self-sufficient 
noble,  whose  contumacy  when  the  royal  clemency  is  offered 
him  brings  about  his  deserved  fall.  Chabot,  Admiral  of 
France,  licensed  only  in  the  reign  of  King  Charles,  is  the  fifth 
of  these  French  histories  of  Chapman;  and  though  by  far  the 
best  as  a  play,  from  its  revision  if  not  complete  rewriting  by 
Shirley,  is  beyond  the  range  of  our  period.  In  the  other  four 
plays  we  have  the  most  characteristic  contribution  of  Chap- 
man to  the  drama  of  his  time.  These  French  histories  are 
full  of  poetry,  thought,  and  a  certain  power  of  moralizing  in 
verse  for  which  their  author  is  justly  memorable.     But  they 


FOREIGN  HISTORIES  257 

are,  save  for  Chabot,  formless  and  chaotic;  though  it  is  re- 
markable that  Chapman's  personages  are  none  the  less  dis- 
coverable in  so  much  detail  and  stand  out  often  so  dinstinctly. 
In  these  dramas,  as  in  nearly  everything  he  wrote,  we  feel 
that  Chapman  strives  too  hard.  Ease  and  naturalness  he 
seems  never  to  have  compassed;  all  is  effort  and  strenuous 
endeavor,  with  not  quite  complete  success.  These  were  by 
no  means  the  only  plays  levying  on  foreign  contemporary 
history  and  after  Shakespeare's  death  came  several  such,  as 
Fletcher's  Bartiavelt,  The  Noble  Spanish  Soldier  by  Dekker, 
and  William  Rowley  and  Middleton's  Game  at  Chess,  which 
were  close  upon  the  heels  of  the  events  that  they  depict.  A 
background  of  French  "history"  serves  for  two  early  anony- 
mous romantic  dramas,  The  Trial  of  Chivalry,  1 597,  and 
The  Weakest  Goeth  to  the  Wall,  1 600;  the  Faust-like  bio- 
graphical Tragedy  of  Pope  Alexander,  1606,  by  the  lyric  poet 
Barnabe  Barnes,  is  one  of  many  quasi-historical  tragedies  of 
Italian  scene.  Other  plays,  such  as  A  Larumfor  London,  1602, 
and  TheHector  of  Germany,  1615,  lay  their  scene  in  the  last- 
named  country.  Among  them  is  Alphonsus  of  Germany,  an 
historical  tragedy  of  no  little  force,  of  doubtful  date,  and  even 
more  doubtfully  attributed  by  some  to  Chapman. 

Let  us  turn  back  to  our  point  of  departure  once  more. 
Few  plays  enjoyed  the  popularity  of  The  Spanish  Tragedy, 
and  few  begot  as  time  went  on  so  large  and  vigorous  a  progeny. 
This  popular  work  of  Kyd  is  a  tragedy  of  revenge  and  we  have 
seen  above  how  closely  its  story  parallels  that  of  Hamlet,  an 
early  version  of  which  may  be  confidently  attributed  to  Kyd 
also.  It  was  in  1599  that  young  John  Marston,  fresh  from 
the  university  and  from  penning  sundry  satires  and  unre- 
strained erotic  poems,  placed  on  the  stage  his  Antonio  and 
Mellida  and  Antonio's  Revenge,  two  dramas  of  vital  if  unequal 
power  and  promise.  The  former  is  a  serious  drama,  arrested 
just  short  of  tragedy;  the  latter  a  tragedy  of  revenge  following 
closely  the  method  and  even  the  details  of  The  Spanish 
Tragedy  and  Hamlet.  Thus  Antonio's  revenge  is  for  a  father 
slain,  that  vengeance  is  invoked  by  his  father's  ghost,  Antonio 
is  driven  nearly  mad  by  his  grief  and  horror,  and  hesitates  to 


258      THE  HEYDAY  OF  TRAGEDY 

kill  his  enemy,  as  does  Hamlet,  when  in  his  power;  while,  as 
in  The  Spanish  Tragedy,  the  catastrophe  is  brought  about  by 
a  play  within  a  play.  But  Antonio's  Revenge  is  no  mere 
copy;  it  is  full  of  real  and  original  horrors  of  its  own  and,  with 
all  its  stridency  and  melodrama,  an  effective  piece  of  work. 
Whether  Marston  started  the  revival  or  an  earlier  revival  than 
we  know  inspired  Marston,  certain  it  is  that  a  couple  of  years 
later  The  Spanish  Tragedy  was  revived  on  the  stage  with 
great  success  and  that  no  less  a  man  than  Ben  Jonson  was 
paid  for  additions,  chiefly  to  the  psychology  (as  we  should 
call  it)  of  the  protagonist  Hieronimo,  the  distracted  father 
who  seeks  where  to  apply  his  vengeance  for  the  murder  of  his 
innocent  son.  By  1603  the  earliest  quarto  of  The  Revenge  of 
Hamlet  Prince  of  Denmark  was  printed.  It  was  enlarged  and 
revised  in  the  following  year,  and  a  third  version,  diflTering 
in  important  particulars,  appeared  in  the  folio,  seven  years 
after  Shakespeare's  death.  The  rewriting  of  Kyd's  old 
Hamlet  by  a  rival  company  so  soon  after  the  revival  and  revi- 
sion of  The  Spanish  Tragedy,  with  Antonio's  Revenge  still 
holding  the  stage,  makes  all  but  irresistible  the  inference  that 
these  two  old  plays  of  Kyd  were  rewritten  and  revised  in 
emulation  the  one  with  the  other  by  the  two  greatest  drama- 
tists of  their  time.  The  problem  that  confronts  the  student 
as  to  this  most  notable  of  all  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  is  com- 
plex and  difl&cult,  and  with  the  data  at  hand  quite  insoluble. 
Nor  is  the  matter  helped  by  the  loss  of  any  trace  of  Kyd's 
old  Hamlet  or  the  existence  of  a  German  version  of  the  play 
derived  from  England,  but  whether  before  or  after  the  Shake- 
spearean quartos  is  doubtful.  What  was  the  nature  of  Kyd's 
original  Hamlet  ?  What  parts  have  been  retained  by  Shake- 
speare, and  what  are  his  changes  and  departures  ?  What  is 
the  true  relation  of  all  these  versions  ?  Such  are  some  of  the 
questions  we  should  like  definitely  answered  but  which  seem, 
despite  all  the  scholarship  lavished  upon  them,  likely  to  remain 
"in  the  backward  and  abysm  of  time." 

Fortunately  for  the  enjoyment  of  this  world  tragedy  we 
need  none  of  these  extraneous  matters.  To  the  understand- 
ing of  Shakespeare's  depth  of  thought  and  wisdom  we  may 


THE  TRAGEDY  OF  REVENGE  259 

bring  all  the  native  wit  and  the  added  learning  we  may  have 
acquired  and  it  will  be  none  too  much;  but  for  these  plays, 
as  works  of  fiction,  verily  he  who  runs  may  read,  though  he 
must  often  content  himself  with  a  meaning  rather  than  the 
meaning.  Therefore  the  madness  or  soundness  of  Hamlet, 
the  degree  of  his  mother's  guilt,  was  Ophelia  frail  or  only 
faulty,  or  Polonius  the  tedious  old  fool  that  Hamlet  called  him 
—  these  are  matters  unimportant  in  view  of  the  truth  to  life, 
the  insight  into  the  depths  of  the  human  heart,  and  the  larger 
philosophy  of  life  which  this  great  drama  gives  us.  We  may 
outlive  the  form  of  these  dramas  and  find  conventional  and 
stale  the  measured  words  and  cadenced  melody  of  their 
rhetoric  (if  Mr.  Shaw  will  so  have  it),  but  the  sanity  of  Shake- 
speare's outlook  on  life  is  imperishable,  and  when  we  have 
degenerately  ceased  to  respond  to  his  poetry  we  must  remain 
the  subjects  of  his  wit  and  of  that  incomparable  wisdom  that 
flashes  impartially  on  all  and  illumines  whatever  it  touches. 
But  our  tale  of  the  tragedy  of  revenge  is  not  yet  complete. 
In  1602  Henry  Chettle  put  forth  his  melodramatic  Tragedy 
of  Hoffman  or  a  Revenge  for  a  Father,  which  it  is  impossible 
to  believe  was  not  written  at  least  after  the  revival  of  the  older 
Hamlet  if  not  subsequent  to  the  appearance  on  the  stage  of 
the  earlier  Shakespearean  version  of  that  play.  Chettle 
heaped  several  additional  horrors  on  those  already  invented 
by  Marston  and  is  especially  ingenious  in  the  variety  of  dread- 
ful deaths  by  which  his  characters  depart  from  this  life. 
About  this  time  was  staged  The  Atheist's  Tragedy  by  Cyril 
Tourneur,  as  appears  by  the  title-page.  Tourneur  lived 
much  abroad,  chiefly  in  the  Low  Countries;  and  his  slender 
literary  work  is  negligible  except  for  this  play  and  a  second. 
The  Revenger's  Tragedy,  printed  without  his  name  in  1607. 
Both  are  powerful  and  eflfective  dramas  full  of  action  and 
inventive  device  although  they  differ  materially  in  atmosphere 
and  design,  the  first  assuming  the  moralist's  attitude  towards 
life  and  crime.  The  Revenger  s  Tragedy  flaunting  a  bitterly 
cynical  outlook  on  the  world  and  all  its  doings.  This  con- 
trast has  raised  a  question  as  to  whether  both  plays  can  be  by 
the  same  hand.     Whatever  the  truth  of  this  matter,  in  terrible 


26o      THE  HEYDAY  OF  TRAGEDY 

realism  of  effect,  in  mastery  of  horror  and  poetry,  The  Re- 
venger s  Tragedy  takes  its  place  in  our  drama  as  second  only 
to  Webster  himself  in  these  high  qualities  of  tragic  art. 
With  the  intervention  between  the  two  plays  just  named  of 
Chapman's  Revenge  of  Bussy  D'Ambois  already  mentioned, 
we  complete  the  list  of  tragedies  of  revenge,  at  least  of  the 
type  strictly  so  called.  The  tragedy  of  revenge  from  its  very 
nature  deals  with  crime,  conscience,  and  remorse.  These 
plays  make  potent  use  of  the  supernatural  and  other  terrors. 
Chapman  is  the  clumsiest  in  the  use  of  such  devices;  Marston 
and  Tourneur  are  more  successfully  inventive.  Shake- 
speare's ghosts  tr^cend  their  disembodied  fellows  as  his  men 
and  women  excel  the  characters  of  other  dramatists.  And 
this  is  not  because  he  was  less  willing  to  obscure  in  his  art  the 
line  that  marks  what  most  men  feel  that  they  do  know  from 
that  which  they  mistrust,  as  because  the  Shakespearean  ghost 
is  always  true  to  the  seat  of  his  origin  in  the  psychology  of  man. 
To  classify  the  subjects  of  Jacobean  tragedy  would  be  to 
run  the  gamut  of  human  passion:  love,  jealousy,  revenge, 
ambition,  pride,  all  are  there,  as  Shakespeare  alone  is  enough 
to  disclose.  A  powerful  if  forbidding  group  of  tragedies  is 
that  which  deals  with  womanhood  in  that  deadly  perversion 
by  which  woman  exists  but  for  the  destruction  of  man.  Such 
figures  were  Tamora  in  Titus  Andronicus  and  the  "lasci- 
vious queen"  of  Lust's  Dominion,  mistakenly  attributed  to 
Marlowe.  Middleton,  Marston,  and  Webster  each  contrib- 
uted a  drama  of  unusual  reputation  to  this  class  and  all  three 
fall  close  to  the  year  1612.  Middleton's  Women  Beware 
Women  relates  in  its  major  plot  the  career  of  Bianca  Capello, 
who  is  represented  as  at  first  the  innocent  victim  of  a  lady- 
procuress,  Livia,  to  the  Duke  de'  Medici's  lust,  but  sinks  by 
steps  to  murder.  A  still  more  revolting  underplot  makes  up 
an  intricate  but  clearly  constructed  piece  of  realism,  terrible 
in  its  truth  as  it  is  superlative  in  its  art.  The  Insatiate  Countess 
of  Marston  (though  his  authorship  has  sometimes  been  ques- 
tioned) tells  of  the  headlong  career  of  a  petulant  wanton  and 
the  havoc  that  was  wrought  by  her  beauty  and  her  crimes. 
Marston   had   treated   the   same   theme,   less   luridly  though 


JOHN  WEBSTER  261 

scarcely  with  less  effect,  in  The  Dutch  Courtesan,  described 
as  a  comedy  and  linking,  in  the  contrast  that  it  sustains,  with 
the  domestic  dramas  of  the  good  wife  and  the  wanton.  The 
third  of  these  tragedies  is  Webster's  Vittoria  Corombona  other- 
wise known  as  The  White  Devil. 

John  Webster,  concerning  the  details  of  whose  life  we 
know  next  to  nothing,  appears  first  in  the  history  of  the  drama 
as  a  co-worker,  especially  with  Dekker,  in  Henslowe's  mart 
of  plays.  This  collaboration  begot  the  chronicle  play  Sir 
Thomas  JVyatt  and  the  Middletonian  comedies  of  manners, 
IVestward  Hoe  and  Nortward  Hoe,  all  on  the  stage  by  1 604 
or  1605.  Webster's  hand  in  other  plays  does  not  concern  us 
as  his  authorship  is  doubtful.  His  unaided  extant  work 
comprises  four  plays,  The  White  Devil,  The  Duchess  of  Malfi. 
The  DeviVs  Law  Case,  and  Appius  and  Virginia,  published 
variously  in  1612,  1623,  and  1654  and  written  it  is  difficult  to 
say  precisely  when.  The  DeviVs  Law  Case  is  a  romantic 
comedy  of  no  very  striking  excellence;  Appius  and  Virginiay 
a  tragedy  on  the  well-known  classical  story  of  very  genuine 
merit,  though  restrained  and  self-contained  in  great  contrast 
to  the  robust  romanticism  of  Webster's  most  characteristic 
work.  It  is  on  the  two  romantic  tragedies  that  remain  that 
the  reputation  of  Webster,  as  our  greatest  dramatist  in  the 
domain  of  the  terrible,  rests  secure,  for  there  are  no  tragedies 
of  their  kind  that  surpass  them. 

The  White  Devil  purports  to  be  the  actual  life-history  of 
*'Vittoria  Corombona,  the  famous  Venetian  courtesan."  It 
deals  with  the  profligate  Duke  of  Brachiano's  infatuation  for 
Vittoria  and  the  resulting  tragedy  to  them  both.  But  no 
description  can  make  clear  the  brilliant  and  fascinating  per- 
sonality of  this  "innocent-seeming  white  devil"  of  decadent 
Italy,  and  the  vivid  group  of  personages  —  the  cynical  Fla- 
mineo,  her  brother,  her  helpless  and  distracted  mother,  the 
politic  brothers  Medici  and  Monticelso  —  that  surround  her. 
The  White  Devil,  because  it  departs  both  in  general  intent  and 
in  many  details  from  the  facts  of  the  celebrated  case  of  the  real 
Vittoria  .*\ccoramboni,  has  been  thought  to  have  been  derived 
from   the   hearsay  of  some   Italian  traveler  returned.     The 


262      THE  HEYDAY  OF  TRAGEDY 

story  of  The  Duchess  of  Malfi,  on  the  other  hand,  represents 
an  embarassment  of  sources,  though  Webster  unquestionably 
found  the  version  that  he  used  in  the  old  quarry  for  Eliza- 
bethan playwrights,  Painter's  Palace  of  Pleasure.  Webster's 
tragedy  has  been  customarily  dated  after  Shakespeare's 
death.  It  now  appears  that  an  actor,  Willam  Osteler,  who 
took  a  part  in  The  Duchess  of  Malfi,  died  towards  the  close  of 
the  year  1614.  Indeed,  it  has  been  well  argued  that  the  like- 
ness of  Webster's  two  tragedies  should  place  their  composition 
close  together.  Perhaps  16 10  for  The  JVhite  Devil  and  16 1 2 
for  The  Duchess  of  Malfi.  is  as  near  as  need  be.  The  latter 
tragedy  tells  of  the  vengeance  which  two  brothers  took  on  the 
duchess,  their  sister,  for  marrying  without  their  knowledge  or 
consent,  a  man  in  every  respect  worthy  of  her  love,  save  for  his 
rank.  The  refinements  of  their  cruelty,  carried  out  with  inex- 
orable precision  to  the  bitter  end,  by  a  creature  of  their  making, 
named  Bosola;  the  steadfast,  heroic  fatalism  of  the  duchess; 
the  contrasted  wickedness  of  the  brothers,  especially  the  re- 
morse of  Ferdinand,  are  among  the  finest  things  in  the  whole 
range  of  tragic  literature  and  compare  in  the  gnomic  wisdom, 
the  brilliant  diction,  and  admirable  poetry  in  which  the  drama 
is  set  with  Shakespeare  himself  when  all  but  at  his  greatest. 
Attention  has  been  called  to  the  success  with  which  Webster 
creates  an  atmosphere  of  ominous  gloom  in  these  masterful 
tragedies,  and  how  he  works  at  times,  in  a  manner  familiar 
to  Shakespeare,  by  means  of  instantaneous  dramatic  moments 
charged  with  revealing  passion.  The  influence  of  the  master- 
poet  on  Webster  has  thus  been  happily  called  not  literary  but 
dramatic,  and  it  is  conceivable  that  it  may  have  been  derived 
less  from  a  reading  of  Shakespeare's  plays  than  from  a  study 
of  them  on  the  boards  as  acted. ^  As  an  example  of  the  Web- 
sterian  atmosphere  take  his  transfigured  use  of  the  familiar 
lyrists'  device  of  an  echo  in  The  Duchess  of  Malfi.  Antonio, 
whose  beloved  duchess  lies  dead  with  her  children,  although 
he  does  not  know  it,  is  on  his  way  with  a  friend  to  meet  his 

*  See  M.  W.  Sampson,  Wehster^  Belles  Lettres  Series,  Introduction, 
p.  xix. 


"THE  DUCHESS  OF  MALFI"  263 

own   death.     The   scene,   as   so   often   with   Shakespeare,    is 
vividly  suggested  in  the  dialogue. 

Delia.     This  fortification 
Grew  from  the  ruins  of  an  ancient  abbey: 
And  to  yond  side  o'  th'  river,  lies  a  wall. 
Piece  of  a  cloister,  which  in  my  opinion 
Gives  the  best  echo  that  you  ever  heard; 
So  hollow  and  so  dismal,  and  withal 
So  plain  in  the  distinction  of  our  words. 
That  many  have  supposed  it  is  a  spirit^ 
That  answers. 

Antonio.     I  do  love  these  ancient  ruins. 
We  never  tread  upon  them  but  we  set 
Our  foot  upon  some  reverend  history; 
And  questionless,  here  in  this  open  court. 
Which  now  lies  naked  to  the  injuries 
Of  stormy  weather,  some  men  lie  interred 
Loved  the  church  so  well,  and  gave  so  largely  to  't, 
They  thought  it  should  have  canopied  their  bones 
Till  doomsday.     But  all  things  have  their  end: 
Churches  and  cities  (which  have  diseases  like  to  men) 
Must  have  like  death  that  we  have. 

Echo.     Like  death  that  we  have. 

Delio.     Now  the  echo  hath  caught  you. 

Ant.     It  groaned,  me  thought,  and  gave 
A  very  deadly  accent  ? 

Echo.     Deadly  accent. 

Delio.     I  told  you  'twas  a  pretty  one.     You  may  make  it 
A  huntsman,  or  a  falconer,  a  musician. 
Or  a  thing  of  sorrow. 

Echo.     A  thing  of  sorrow. 

Ant.     Aye,  sure:   that  suits  it  best. 

Echo.     That  suits  it  best. 

Ant.     Tis  very  like  my  wife's  voice. 

Echo.     Aye,  wife's  voice. 

Delio.     Come:  let's  us  walk  farther  from  't. 
I  would  not  have  you  go  to  th*  cardinal's  to-night: 
Do  not. 

Echo.     Do  not. 


264      THE  HEYDAY  OF  TRAGEDY 

Ant.     Necessity  compels  me: 
Make  scrutiny  throughout  the  passages 
Of  your  own  life;  you  '11  find  it  impossible 
To  fly  your  fate. 

Echo.     0  fly  your  fate. 

Delto.     Hark:  the  dead  stones  seem  to  have  pity  on  you 
And  give  you  good  counsel. 

Ant.     Echo,  I  will  not  talk  with  thee; 
For  thou  art  a  dead  thing. 

Echo.     Thou  art  a  dead  thing. 

Ant.     My  duchess  is  asleep  now, 
And  her  little  ones,  I  hope  sweetly:  oh  heaven. 
Shall  I  never  see  her  more  ? 

Echo.     Never  see  her  more. 

As   to   the    instantaneous   dramatic   moments,   charged   with 
revealing  passion,  such  are  the  much  quoted: 
I  am  the  Duchess  of  Malfi  still, 

and  Ferdinand's  words,  as  his  sister  lies  dead  before  him: 
Cover  her  face.     Mine  eyes  dazzle:   she  died  young. 

Of  almost  equal  intensity  is  the  last  cry  of  Vittoria: 

My  soul,  like  to  a  ship  in  a  black  storm 
Is  driven  I  know  not  whither. 

Returning  to  the  tragedies  of  Shakespeare,  Titus,  Romeo 
and  Juliet,  the  Roman  plays,  with  Timon  and  Hamlet,  each 
has  received  from  us  thus  far  that  modicum  of  attention  which 
a  book  of  this  plan  can  give  it.  There  remain  Othello,  Lear, 
and  Macbeth.  Othello  is  the  master  tragedy  on  the  passion 
of  jealousy  which  Shakespeare  had  already  touched  in  comedy 
in  Ford  of  The  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,  and  which  he  was 
to  treat  so  much  more  fully  in  King  Leontes  of  The  Winter  s 
Tale  and  Leonatus  Posthumus  in  Cymheline,  Just  as  Shake- 
speare raised  the  theme  of  man's  love  for  woman  to  an  ideal- 
ized beauty  in  Romeo  and  Juliet  and  yet  left  it  of  the  earth 
that  engenders  it  earthy,  so  he  ennobled,  while  in  no  wise 
emasculating  its  strength  and  terror,  the  venomous  passion 
of  jealousy.  There  is  scarcely  anything  in  which  Shake- 
speare is  so  in  contrast  with  his  competitors  in  the  drama  of 


"OTHELLO"  AND  "KING  LEAR"  265 

his  time,  for  none  has  so  contrived  to  preserve  the  dignity  of 
human  character  in  the  midst  of  the  infirmities  of  passion 
that  beset  it.  Othello  is  usually  dated  1604,  after  Hamlet 
and  immediately  preceding  King  Lear.  The  barest  hints  in 
a  novel  of  Cinthio's  Hecatommithi  served  for  the  framing  of 
Othello,  Desdemona,  and  lago;  and  Cassio's  drunkenness, 
Emilia's  theft  of  the  handkerchief,  and  the  whole  handling  of 
the  catastrophe  with  much  else  are  altogether  Shakespeare's 
invention.  With  his  entire  lurid  brotherhood  from  the 
tragedy  of  revenge  about  him  —  Vindici,  Hoffman,  Antonio, 
D'Amville,  and  the  rest  —  lago  remains  the  arch  villain  of  all 
literature.  All  of  these  "revengers"  have  a  real  impetus  for 
their  crimes  except  D'Amville,  and  he  dies  mad.  De  Flores 
in  The  Changeling  is  no  more  than  a  masterful  voluptuary, 
willing  to  face  death  with  unutterable  crimes  that  he  may 
enjoy  and  drag  down  with  him  the  woman  he  has  singled  out 
for  his  victim.  Webster's  Bosola,  who  resembles  lago  in  his 
outspoken  "honesty,"  is  a  connoisseur  in  crime,  satiating  a 
morbid  curiosity  in  the  tortures  of  his  victims  and  yet  revert- 
ing to  his  better  self  momentarily  in  the  end.  In  lago  alone 
is  villainy  wanton  and  gratuitous  and  the  monstrous  fruit  of 
petty  and  serpentine  envy.  And  yet  with  all  his  malignity, 
subtlety,  and  venomous  spite,  the  most  terrible  thing  about 
lago  is  that  he  remains  human. 

King  Lear  is  best  dated  1605;  for  in  that  year  the  old  play, 
King  Leir  and  his  Three  Daughters  (on  which  Shakespeare's 
tragedy  is  founded),  was  entered  in  the  Stationers'  Register 
and  published,  a  thing  unaccountable  except  on  the  assump- 
tion that  the  subject  had  been  revived  on  the  stage  or  else- 
where. From  the  point  of  view  of  ultimate  source.  King 
Lear  is  a  chronicle  play;  as  the  story,  told  in  Geoffrey  of 
Monmouth,  recurs  in  Holinshed,  The  Mirror  for  Magistrates y 
and  elsewhere,  and  was  accepted,  with  other  such  "history," 
in  its  day.  The  underplot  of  Gloster  and  his  blinding,  with 
his  contrasted  faithful  and  wicked  son,  skilfully  parallels  the 
main  story  and  is  derived,  in  its  essentials,  from  an  episode 
of  Sidney's  Arcadia.  But  here,  as  in  Macbeth,  Shakespeare 
has  not  only  glorified  his  material,  he  has  transmuted  it  into 


266      THE  HEYDAY  OF  TRAGEDY 

a  something  so  entirely  new  that  the  accident  of  its  origin  — 
like  the  origin  of  the  sad-eyed  clown  —  is  a  matter  of  no 
moment.  Lear  is  a  tragedy  of  overpowering  force  and  torren- 
tial swiftness.  In  no  work  of  Shakespeare's  are  his  personages 
so  intensely  conceived  and  nowhere  does  he  more  poignantly 
reach  the  heart  than  in  this  pitiful  tale  of  hapless  Cordelia 
and  her  distracted  father. 

With  Macbeth  —  another  chronicle  play  from  its  source 
in  Holinshed  but  equally  glorified  above  its  type  —  we  bring 
this  enumeration  of  Shakespeare's  tragedies  to  a  close.  Mac- 
beth was  written  in  1605  or  1606,  and  doubtless  after  King 
Lear.  It  appeared  in  print  for  the  first  time  in  the  folio,  and 
it  has  been  supposed  suffered  some  mutilation  of  text  and  inter- 
polation in  a  couple  of  scenes,  found  likewise  in  Middleton's 
Witch,  a  comedy  of  uncertain  date.  The  opening  scenes 
between  Macbeth  and  his  wife,  the  knocking  at  the  gate,  the 
appearance  of  Banquo's  ghost,  the  prophecies  of  the  witches 
in  Macbeth's  second  interview  with  them,  and  the  sleep- 
walking of  Lady  Macbeth,  these  are  some  of  the  things  not 
found  in  the  chronicle  but  found  in  the  play.  But  little  does 
this  indicate  the  welding  into  a  complete  dramatic  organism 
of  this  story  of  inordinate  but  halting  ambition,  steadied  by 
marvelous  constancy  and  wifely  devotion  in  evil,  and  lured 
on  to  inevitable  overthrow  by  the  supernatural  agency  of 
"the  weird  sisters." 

Were  we  to  look  for  a  prodigy  in  letters,  where  could  we 
find  the  equal  of  yultus  Ceesar,  Hamlet,  Othello,  King  Lear, 
Macbeth  and  Antony  and  Cleopatra,  six  master  tragedies  of 
all  time,  written  in  little  more  than  the  same  number  of  years 
with  the  several  serious  comedies  that  accompanied  them  as 
well  ?  The  range  of  feeling,  the  depth  of  wisdom  and  under- 
standing, to  say  nothing  of  the  dramatic  art  and  the  sheer 
poetry  of  these  great  tragedies,  stand  out  and  beyond  the 
achievements  in  literature  of  all  other  men  in  other  times. 
And  we  read  and  study  them,  finding  new  truth  and  beauty 
in  them  as  perennially  as  in  nature  and  the  return  of  spring. 
It  is  a  great  tribute  to  Shakespeare's  genius  that  we  disagree, 
as  we  do,  about  his  people.     Ordinary  art  produces  much  the 


THE  TECHNIQUE  OF  SHAKESPEARE       267 

same  effect  on  each  and  every  reader.  We  see  the  same  object 
and  agree  about  it.  About  real  persons,  historical  or  of  our 
acquaintance,  there  is  room  for  greater  difference  of  opinion. 
It  is  because  Shakespeare's  characters  are  so  real  that  we  in- 
terpret them  so  variously,  that  we  fall  out  about  the  sanity  of 
Hamlet  or  the  sincerity  of  HenryV.  But  Shakespeare's  real- 
ism is  far  from  all.  Equally  with  Sophocles  does  Shake- 
speare in  these  great  tragedies  uphold  the  nobility  and  poetic 
elevation  of  the  tragic  art.  His  personages  and  their  doings 
are  absorbing  above  the  interest  that  we  feel  in  actual  men 
because  their  innate  qualities  and  capabilities,  the  things 
they  do,  they  feel,  and  suffer,  are  resolved  for  us  by  the  poet's 
energy  into  a  finer,  more  logical  and  dignified  reality  than  are 
ever  these  things  in  life. 

We  have  traced  above  —  as  it  is  customary  to  trace  them 
—  some  of  the  characteristics  that  marked  the  strengthening 
and  ripening  of  Shakespeare's  genius  in  his  verse  and  style, 
his  rhetoric  and  his  taste.  The  technique  of  his  dramatic  art 
also  grew  strong  with  use  and  maturing  genius.  There  is 
Love's  Labor's  Lost  with  its  King  of  Navarre  and  the  Princess  of 
France,  each  attended  respectively  by  three  lords  and  three 
ladies  who  speak  in  strict  alternation  and,  save  for  Biron,  with 
as  little  to  distinguish  them  as  the  three  kings  of  Brentford. 
In  Romeo  and  Juliet  when  the  Montagues  and  Capulets  assem- 
ble in  the  opening  scene,  the  scene  is  built  up  like  an  arch: 
serving  man  of  Montague,  serving  man  of  Capulet;  Montague, 
Capulet;  kinsman  of  Montague,  kinsman  of  Capulet;  Mon- 
tague, Capulet,  Lady  Montague  and  Lady  Capulet,  with  the 
prince  for  a  cap-stone.  This  is  not  much  better  than  Gorbo- 
duc.  Such  is  not  the  daring  structure  at  large  of  King  Lear, 
with  the  plot  of  the  king  and  his  good  and  evil  daughters 
paralleled  and  enforced  with  the  story  of  Gloster  and  his  good 
and  evil  sons,  and  the  daring  contrast,  in  that  supreme  scene 
of  the  storm,  of  senile  dementia,  congenital  imbecility,  and 
feigned  madness.  Much  has  been  written  of  late  on  Shake- 
speare as  a  constructive  artist,  some  wisely,  some  not  so  well. 
It  has  been  thought  that  virtue  lies  in  discovering  "the  cli- 
max" of  Macbeth;   and  the  precise  point  at  which  "the  tragic 


268      THE  HEYDAY  OF  TRAGEDY 

force"  of  Othello  arises  is  a  thing  to  be  argued  with  zeal  and 
defended  with  might.  A  few  years  ago  quite  a  new  science  of 
dramatic  structure  arose,  founded  on  Freitag's  interpretation 
of  certain  lecture  notes  of  one  of  the  students  of  Aristotle 
entitled  the  Poetics,  and  on  other  peoples'  improvements  and 
additions  to  Freitag.  Moreover  this  new  science,  after  the 
manner  of  new  sciences,  begot  a  horrid  and  numerous  progeny 
of  technical  terms  such  as  "motivation,"  "enveloping, 
counter  and  main  action,"  "passion-movement,"  "deration- 
alization,"  and  "shock  of  Nemesis,"  with  many  things  to 
learn  and  more  to  ponder.  Now  there  is  surely  no  more  harm 
in  charts  of  dramaticstructure  or  diagrams  of  character-contact 
than  in  charts  of  the  force  of  the  wind  or  prognostications  of 
temperature.  But  the  last  are  no  more  the  cause  of  good 
weather  than  the  first  are  any  real  helps  to  our  understanding 
of  the  genius  of  Shakespeare.  We  may  admit  that,  if  the 
truth  be  told  and  all  the  plays  considered,  Shakespeare  is  not 
conspicuous  as  a  merely  constructive  dramatist.  Jonson 
could  write  a  more  ingenious  play,  and  one  better  able,  in 
Ascham's  quaint  phrase,  "to  abide  the  precepts  of  Aristotle." 
Shakespeare  had  before  him  something  better  than  elaborate 
and  clever  structure  in  which  the  mind  is  directed  from  the 
subject  in  hand  to  admiration  for  the  cleverness  of  the  artist 
or  the  difficulty  of  the  problem.  Shakespeare  was  seeking 
the  dramatic  and  poetic  picturing  of  life;  for  the  rest  he  cared 
not  a  jot  or  tittle.  Hence  his  carelessness  at  times  and  his 
indifference  where  lesser  men  would  show  anxiety;  though, 
none  the  less,  in  tragedy  where  rigor  of  cause  and  effect  is  most 
demanded,  there  is  little  surplusage  in  Shakespeare's  method 
and  he  rarely  deviates  from  the  direct  course  of  his  story. 
In  this  whole  matter  of  dramatic  structure  it  would  be  well 
to  consider  less  the  standard  rule,  whatever  its  learned  deri- 
vation, and  more  the  individual  organic  structure.  It  is  of 
less  importance  to  know  that  Shakespeare  habitually  reaches 
the  turning-point  of  his  action  in  the  middle  of  the  third  act 
than  to  recognize  that  the  organism  of  Hmnlet  is  not  that  of 
Macbeth  or  Othello.  Antony  and  Cleopatra  is  straggling  and 
well  drawn  out  in  structure,  for  the  events  were  long  preparing 


THE  REALISM  OF  SHAKESPEARE  269 

that  brought  about  the  fall  of  these  royal  infatuated  lovers. 
Hamlet,  too,  is  lengthy  and  slow  of  development  in  harmony 
with  the  doubt  and  hesitancy  that  paralized  the  "revenger's" 
purpose  and  in  accord  with  his  introspective  and  pondering 
nature.  Othello  progresses  gradually  with  the  sinuous  glides 
of  serpentine  lago,  to  rush  to  immediate  and  overwhelming 
catastrophe  when  the  passion  of  Othello  breaks  from  lago's 
guidance  and  suggestion.  Macbeth  is  swift  and  accelerated 
as  crime  begets  crime  and  remorse  follows  hard  on  the  heels 
of  ambition.  Finally,  Lear  is  of  a  torrential  swiftness,  bearing 
innocent  and  guilty  alike  to  destruction,  for  the  decree  that 
carelessly  dismembered  a  kingdom  and  banished  Cordelia 
was  the  decree  of  a  madman. 

It  is  easy  to  see,  as  we  read  Shakespeare's  plays  in  the 
general  order  of  their  writing,  that  Shakespeare  viewed  the 
world  as  mirrored  in  them  from  the  changing  points  of 
vantage  that  mark  his  own  growth  from  youth  to  the  sager 
attitude  of  middle  life.  It  was  a  young  man  that  depicted  the 
fire  and  passion  of  the  lovers,  Romeo  and  Juliet,  and  it  was  a 
younger  man  who  was  contented  with  the  badinage  and  occa- 
sional silliness  of  Love's  Labor's  Lost.  Shakespeare's  attitude 
towards  older  people  in  the  earlier  plays  also  shows  his  youth. 
The  elder  Capulet  is  viewed  solely  from  the  lovers'  point  of 
view.  Much  might  be  said  for  the  prudence  and  respecta- 
bility of  that  old  gentleman.  Friar  Laurence,  too,  talks  ex- 
actly as  a  young  man  thinks  that  he  has  observed  old  men  to 
talk.  It  was  not  for  nothing  that  Shakespeare  w^ent  through 
the  Slough  of  Despond,  depicted  in  the  gloomier  comedies  of 
disillusion;  for  in  the  later  tragedies  is  disclosed  that  fuller 
power  that  comes  with  years  to  sound  the  deeps  of  human 
crime  and  passion,  till,  in  the  latest  plays  we  find  Shakespeare 
again  and  again  assuming  the  attitude  of  the  older  and  wiser 
man  who  lives  over  again  in  recollection  the  past  that  once 
was  his  and  seeks  his  real  happiness  in  the  joy  and  hopeful- 
ness of  those  who  are  shortly  to  succeed  him. 

The  variety  of  Elizabethan  tragedies  as  to  subject,  nature, 
and  treatment  calls  for  no  further  word.  As  a  whole  this 
drama    is    realistic   and    outspoken,  unrestrained,  and    often 


270      THE  HEYDAY  OF  TRAGEDY 

melodramatic.  Such  men  as  Marston,  Webster,  and  Tour- 
neur  loved  to  pile  horror  on  horror.  Less  legitimate  are  the 
devices,  later  to  be  more  lawlessly  employed,  whereby  tragic 
themes  are  further  heightened  by  making  their  motives  ab- 
normal: thus  the  ungodly  become  atheistic  or  at  least  cyni- 
cally abandoned,  and  lust  is  supplanted  by  the  horrible  motive 
of  incest.  In  contrast  with  his  fellows  in  the  drama,  Shake- 
speare is  always  true  to  the  normal  mainsprings  of  human 
action  and  passion,  however  he  may  heighten  his  effects  by  a 
momentary  fidelity  to  the  coarser  actualities  of  life.  Shake- 
speare is  always  frankly  realistic,  where  realism  seems  to  him 
to  be  demanded  by  the  nature  of  his  subject.  Moreover, 
Shakespeare's  age  frequently  looked  for  realism  where  the 
usage  of  our  time  demands  reticence  or  at  least  periphrasis. 
No  two  things  are  more  commonly  confused  by  most  of  us  in 
our  daily  colloquial  judgments  of  conduct  than  manners  and 
morals.  Manners  are  parochial,  morals  cosmopolitan.  The 
manners  of  Shakespeare's  day  were  not  ours.  Our  manners 
might  equally  have  shocked  Shakespeare;  for  they  are  tem- 
porary as  his  were  temporary.  The  moral  atmosphere  per- 
vading Shakespeare's  plays  in  large  calls  for  few  apologies  to 
our  age,  although  our  speech  is  more  refined.  Shakespeare 
never  confounds  right  and  wrong;  he  never  leaves  you  in 
doubt  as  to  his  attitude  on  important  questions.  Lear  was 
half  crazed  and  scarcely  responsible  for  his  folly,  Cordelia  had 
much  to  excuse  her  momentary  stubbornness  and  unwilling- 
ness to  humor  her  father's  dotage  with  a  few  kind  words,  yet 
both  are  overwhelmed  in  expiation.  Never  was  man  more 
practised  on  by  diabolical  cunning  and  malice  than  was 
Othello,  yet  his  doubt  quite  as  much  as  his  crime  deserved 
the  logic  of  his  death. 

In  few  things  does  Shakespeare  differ  more  completely 
from  the  majority  of  the  dramatists  of  his  age  than  in  his 
attitude  towards  woman.  In  the  fine  words  of  Ruskin: 
"Shakespeare  has  no  heroes; — he  has  only  heroines.  .  .  . 
The  catastrophe  of  every  play  is  caused  always  by  the  folly 
or  fault  of  a  man;  the  redemption,  if  there  be  any,  is  by  the 
wisdom  and  virtue  of  a  woman,  and  failing  that,  there  is  none." 


THE  WOMEN  OF  SHAKESPEARE  271 

There  is  no  cheap  gallantry  in  these  words  nor  in  the  dramatist 
whose  deep  insight  into  the  manner  of  this  world  they  cele- 
brate. Indeed,  for  the  flippancy  and  heartlessness  of  con- 
temporary gallantry  we  must  consult,  not  the  works  of  Shake- 
speare, but  those  of  Fletcher  and  Middleton.  Except  for 
those  monsters  of  wickedness,  Tamora,  the  two  daughters  of 
Lear,  and  wretched,  trivial  Cressida  — a  preposterous  little 
trull  for  a  fair  youth  like  Troilus  to  trouble  his  heart  about — 
there  is  scarcely  a  woman  wholly  bad  in  all  Shakespeare. 
As  to  Cleopatra,  in  the  romantic  glory  of  her  abandon  to  love 
as  the  all  of  the  world,  Shakespeare's  Cleopatra  is  as  distin- 
guishable from  the  several  frigid  portraits  of  the  Egyptian 
queen  in  Shakespeare's  age  as  she  is  immeasureably  above 
Mr.  Shaw's  ridiculous  hoyden  or  Signor  Ferrero's  dainty  and 
heartless  Parisian  with  a  genius  for  politics 

But  enough;  in  Shakespeare  and  Webster,  English  tragedy 
touched  the  elevation  and  dignity  of  the  drama  of  iEschylus 
and  Sophocles.  Thereafter  it  declined  and  was  superceded 
in  popularity  by  a  novel  variety  of  play  variously  known  as 
tragicomedy  or  "romance."  This  last  stage  of  the  drama 
in  Shakespeare's  lifetime  claims  a  later  and  separate  treat- 
ment, and  to  that  place  we  here  defer  it. 


CHAPTER  XV 

TRANSLATION  IN  VERSE  AND   PROSE 

WE  are  apt  to  think  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth  as  the  age 
of  Shakespeare  and  therefore  the  age  of  the  drama; 
or  as  the  time  when  the  new  inductive  system  was  proposed 
as  a  substitute  for  outworn  medieval  methods  of  thought,  and 
therefore  as  the  age  of  Bacon.  Remembering  how  the  lyric 
flourished  until  England  was  a  veritable  "nest  of  singing  birds," 
we  dub  Elizabeth's  the  age  of  the  lyric;  or  recalling  who  first 
circled  the  globe  and  rifled  the  wealth  of  Spain  in  the  cradle 
of  its  birth,  we  call  Elizabeth's  the  age  of  discovery.  Look 
where  we  will  on  that  incomparable  time  we  behold  men 
physically,  mentally,  and  spiritually  active  with  the  indefati- 
gable buoyancy  of  youth  which  like  each  returning  spring  is 
always  a  new  wonder.  When  the  extraordinary  interest 
which  the  sixteenth  century  took  in  the  classics,  in  modern 
foreign  literatures,  French,  Spanish,  and  especially  Italian  is 
considered,  when  we  add,  too,  to  all  this  the  fact  that  it  was 
within  this  period  that  the  greatest  of  translations,  our  Eng- 
lish Bible,  was  wrought  by  successive  recastings  to  its  per- 
fection, the  age  of  translation  must  seem  no  misnomer.  Some 
years  since  an  industrious  scholar  attempted  an  appraisement 
of  Elizabethan  translations  from  the  Italian  in  three  or  four 
successive  contributions.  I  say  "attempted,"  not  because  the 
work  was  not  well  done,  but  because  such  a  work  could 
scarcely  be  pronounced  complete  except  after  exhaustive 
research  quite  disproportionate  to  its  results.  In  the  first 
paper  there  is  mention  of  one  hundred  and  sixty  translations 
from  the  Italian  within  the  hundred  and  ten  years  from  1550 
to  1660  "made  by  ninety  or  more  translators  including  nearly 
every  well-known  Elizabethan  author  except  Shakespeare 
and  Bacon":  Jonson  and  Donne  might  likewise  have  been 
excepted.     When  the  last  of  these  researches  was  complete, 

272 


THE  AGE  OF  TRANSLATION  273 

the  total  had  risen  to  two  hundred  and  eighteen  EngHsh  trans- 
lations of  two  hundred  and  twenty-three  Italian  authors  in 
general  literature  and  poetry,  this  not  including  more  than 
as  many  more  that  Lamb  would  have  called  "books  in  sheep's 
clothing."  A  more  recent  appraisement  of  Spanish  books 
printed  in  Tudor  England,  including  translations  from  the 
Castilian  tongue,  mounts  up  to  one  hundred  and  sixty  titles. 
And  a  similar  appraisement  for  France  shows,  only  within 
the  lifetime  of  Shakespeare,  the  surprising  total  of  nearly  four 
hundred  titles.  Though  in  this  last  list  there  are  many  cases, 
such  as  North's  translations  of  Amyot's  French  version  of 
Plutarch's  Lives,  in  which  French  is  simply  the  intermediary 
language  between  the  English  translation  and  a  classical, 
Spanish,  or  Italian  original.  We  await  appraisements  such 
as  these  for  the  Dutch  and  Flemish  books  that  found  their 
way  into  Elizabethan  England  in  their  native  garb  or  trans- 
lated. Even  they  could  not  have  been  inconsiderable;  and 
they  were  certainly  more  in  number  and  in  influence  than  the 
few  scatterd  books  printed  in  the  language  of  High  Almaine, 
as  Germany  was  then  called,  that  came  into  England  for  the 
most  part  through  some  other  foreign  channel.^  Now,  if  we 
add  to  this  mass  of  translation  from  modern  foreign  languages 
the  numerous  English  translations  of  the  classics,  from  Bellen- 
den's  Livy,  1536,  one  of  the  earliest  if  not  the  first  translation 
of  a  Latin  classic  in  England,  to  Chapman's  Homer,  completed 
in  the  year  of  Shakespeare's  death,  remembering  that  the  list 
includes  Horace,  Juvenal,  Vergil  by  three  translators,  Ovid, 
at  least  in  part,  by  four  or  five,  Caesar,  Seneca,  the  dramas 
and  the  prose,  Lucan's  Pharsalia,  Apuleius,  Heliodorus,  Sue- 
tonius, parts  of  Plautus  and  Terence,  with  Hesiod,  and 
Musaeus,  parts  of  Theocritus,  besides  Homer,  at  one  extreme 
and  Tacitus,  Plutarch,  and  Josephus  at  the  other,  no  question 
can  possibly  remain  as  to  the  activity  of  the  age  in  this  placing 
of  foreign  words  in  English  dress. 

^  As  to  these  appraisements  see  the  work  of  Miss  M.  A.  Scott  in 
the  Publications  of  the  Modern  Language  Association,  1895-1899;  and 
the  monographs  of  Einstein,  Underbill,  and  Upham  in  Columbia 
University  Studies  in  English,  1902-1908. 


274        TRANSLATION,  VERSE  AND  PROSE 

With  such  a  mass  of  material  before  us,  it  is  plain  that  it 
will  be  better  to  pick  and  choose  a  few  typical  translations 
which  for  one  or  another  reason  have  most  deeply  affected 
the  literature  of  their  time  rather  than  to  attempt  anything 
like  an  appraisement  in  mass  of  this  largely  forgotten  material. 
In  the  time  of  the  experiments  in  classical  meters  it  was  but 
natural  that  attempts  should  have  been  made  to  cloak  the 
English  version  in  a  garb  supposedly  representing  the  ancient 
form.  Surrey  tried  two  books  of  the  Mneid  in  blank-verse 
in  1557.  In  1582,  Richard  Stanihurst,  the  Irish  scholar  and 
contributor  to  Holinshed's  Chronicles,  turned  four  books 
of  the  same  great  epic  into  hexameters,  expressed  in  an  eccen- 
tricity of  vocabulary  and  grotesque  homeliness  of  speech  which 
excite  new  wonder  whenever  read.  Thomas  Drant,  another 
like  experimenter,  theorized  on  hexameters,  but  translated 
the  Satires  of  Horace  and  his  Jrs  Poetica  as  well  as  parts  of 
the  Iliad  into  English  rime.  Arthur  Golding  had  adequately, 
if  diffusely,  translated  the  Metamorphoses  of  Ovid,  with  Caesar 
and  Seneca's  prose  also,  in  the  sixties  and  seventies,  and  the 
young  Marlowe  was  drawn  to  the  Amores  of  Ovid  as  he  was 
drawn  to  reconstruct  the  fragment  of  Musaeus  on  Hero  and 
Leander  by  the  warmth  of  the  Renaissance  imagination  which 
begot  as  well  the  luscious  sensuousness  of  Shakespeare's 
Venus  and  Adonis.  Marlowe's  translation  of  the  Amores 
is  that  of  a  poet. 

We  do  not  know  precisely  the  relations  of  Chapman  to 
Marlowe;  they  must  certainly  have  been  intimate,  for  Chap- 
man followed  closely  in  Marlowe's  footsteps,  not  only  in  the 
drama,  but  in  translation,  first  Englishing  Ovid's  Banquet  of 
Sense,  and  then  completing,  as  we  have  already  seen,  Marlowe's 
unfinished  Hero  and  Leander.  George  Chapman  was  an 
older  man  than  Jonson  and  Marston,  with  both  of  whom  we 
have  already  found  him  in  association  in  the  writing  of 
Eastward  Hoe.  Chapman  was  born  in  1559  at  Hitchin  in 
Hertfordshire,  and  was  educated  at  Oxford,  leaving,  however, 
without  a  degree.  He  was  late  in  turning  to  literature;  at 
least  there  is  no  record  of  any  publication  by  him  before 
The  Shadow  of  the  Night,  two  poetical  hymns,  in  1 594.     The 


GEORGE  CHAPMAN  275 

translation  from  Ovid,  just  mentioned,  followed  immediately 
after.  It  has  been  thought  that  Chapman  wrote  plays  only 
under  protest  and  for  a  livelihood.  Allusions  in  Henslowe's 
Diary  place  his  probable  beginnings  in  comedy  as  far  back 
as  1596,  and  plays  of  his  were  in  print  —  witness  The  Blind 
Beggar  of  Alexandria  and  j4  Humorous  Day's  Mirth  —  by 
1598  and  1599.  Chapman's  repute  in  the  drama  is  referable 
to  his  romantic  comedies,  such  as  The  Gentleman  Usher, 
acted  in  1602,  and  Monsieur  D'Oltve,  1605,  as  well  as  to  his 
comedies  of  humor  and  intrigue  and  to  his  several  dramas 
dealing  with  all  but  contemporary  French  history,  of  both  of 
which  we  have  heard.  But  Chapman  was,  besides,  an  original 
poet  of  repute,  although  his  poems  of  this  class  are  for  the 
most  part  occasional.  Among  them  may  be  named  his  Tears 
of  Peace,  1609,  an  Epicede  or  Funeral  Song  on  the  death  of  his 
patron,  Prince  Henry,  and  Andromeda  Liberata,  1614.  This 
last  celebrates  in  most  unfitting  allegory  the  infamous  marriage 
of  the  notorious  Somerset  with  the  divorced  Countess  of 
Essex;  and  was  a  mistake  characteristic  of  a  scholar  immersed 
in  his  studies  and  myopic  as  to  the  significance  of  passing 
events.  This  must  have  destroyed  once  and  for  all  any  chances 
of  preferment  that  the  poet  may  have  had.  In  all  his  poetry 
Chapman  is  strenuous,  intellectual,  not  emotional,  with  a 
large  sense  for  the  phrase,  but  often  wanting  in  taste  and  plung- 
ing in  the  mazes  of  a  contorted,  difficult,  and  obscure  style. 
It  has  often  been  remarked  that  no  poet  of  his  own  time  so 
resembled  Ben  Jonson.  And  this  is  true  save  for  clarity  of 
diction,  sense  of  proportion,  and  restraint,  none  of  which  are 
among  the  virtues  of  Chapman.  On  the  other  hand,  of  no 
poet  of  the  age,  outside  of  Shakespeare,  can  it  be  said  that  he 
has  left  us  so  many  poetical  passages,  moralizing  wisely  and 
memorably  on  life,  and  quotable  alike  for  their  significance  and 
the  beauty  of  their  diction. 

Chapman's  famous  translation  of  Homer  was  by  no  means 
the  first  attempt  to  English  the  father  of  Greek  poetry.  Aside 
from  Drant's  unpublished  fragments  of  the  Iliad,  written 
before  1580,  Arthur  Hall  had  published  in  the  following  year 
Ten  Books  of  Homer's  Iliads,  translated  out  of  French  in  old- 


276        TRANSLATION,  VERSE  AND   PROSE 

fashioned,  fourteen-line,  riming  measure,  a  clumsy  and  inac- 
curate version.  Chapman  must  have  begun  his  Homeric 
studies  well  back  in  the  reign  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  for  the 
first  instalment  of  his  work,  Seven  Books  of  the  Iliads,  appeared 
in  print  in  1598,  dedicated  to  the  popular  hero  of  the  moment, 
the  young  Earl  of  Essex.  A  second  instalment  dedicated  to 
Prince  Henry  followed  in  1609;  the  IliaJ  wzs  complete  in  161 1, 
the  Odyssey  in  16 16.  Chapman,  always  in  poverty  and  holding 
the  common  world  in  lofty  disdain,  was  encouraged  by  the 
prince  in  his  translation  and  with  the  prince's  untimely  death 
all  hope  of  reward  for  the  poet's  years  of  toil  was  at  an  end. 
Few  translations  have  been  more  enthusiastically  admired 
than  Chapman's,  even  although  his  learning  has  been  im- 
pugned by  those  who  could  never  have  translated  anything 
into  a  poetical  line.  The  unflagging  and  devoted  zeal  which 
Chapman  brought  to  the  prosecution  of  this  great  under- 
taking is  only  exceeded  by  the  genuine  poetic  spirit  that  per- 
vades it  all.  Nor  can  we  say  that  either  his  zeal,  his  learning, 
or  his  poetry  deserted  Chapman  in  his  other  translations,  of 
Hesiod,  of  parts  o(  Juvenal,  of  the  Homeric  Hymns,  and  The 
Battle  of  the  Frogs  and  Mice  which  his  diligence  also  achieved. 
As  a  specimen  of  Chapman's  translation  let  us  take  these 
lines  from  the  famous  speech  in  which  Hector,  departing  for 
his  fatal  combat  with  Achilles,  replies  to  the  entreaties  of 
Andromache: 

Be  well  assured,  wife,  all  these  things  in  my  kind  cares  are  weighted. 
But  what  a  shame  and  fear  it  is  to  think  how  Troy  would  scorn 
(Both  in  her    husbands  and  her    wives,  whom  long-trained  gowns 

adorn) 
That  I  should  cowardly  fly  off!     The  spirit  I  first  did  breathe 
Did  never  teach  me  that;   much  less,  since  the  contempt  of  death 
Was  settled  in  me,  and  my  mind  knew  what  a  worthy  was. 
Whose  office  is  to  lead  in  fight  and  give  no  danger  pass 
Without  improvement.     In  this  fire  must  Hector's  trial  shine; 
Here  must  his  country,  father,  friends,  he  in  him,  made  divine. 
And  such  a  stormy  day  shall  come  (In  mind,  and  soul  I  know) 
When  sacred  Troy  shall  shed  her  towers,  for  tears  of  overthrow; 
When  Priam,  all  his  birth  and  power,  shall  In  those  tears  be  drowned. 
But  neither  Troy's  posterity  so  much  my  soul  doth  wound, 


CHAPMAN'S  "HOMER"  277 

Priam,  nor  Hecuba  herself,  nor  all  my  brothers'  woes, 

(Who  though  so  many  and  so  good  must  all  be  food  for  foes) 

As  thy  sad  state;    when  some  rude  Greek  shall  lead  thee  weeping 

hence. 
These  free  days  clouded,  and  a  night  of  captive  violence 
Loading  thy  temples,  out  of  which  thine  eyes  must  never  see. 
But  spin  the  Greek  wives*  webs  of  task  and  their  fetch-water  be 
To  Argos,  from  Messeides,  or  clear  Hyperia's  spring; 
Which  howsoever  thou  abhorr'st,  Fate  's  such  a  shrewish  thing 
She  will  be  mistress.* 

Well  may  Matthew  Arnold  have  remarked,  "How^  ingen- 
iously Homer's  plain  strength  is  tormented" ;  for  the  words 
in  this  passage  italicized  by  Arnold  mark  amplifications  on 
the  original  which  are  wholly  Elizabethan  and  only  to  an  Eliza- 
bethan an  improvement.  And  yet  no  translator  of  Homer 
who  has  followed  Chapman  has  surpassed  him  in  poetic  spirit 
and  none  dare  leave  his  version  unconsulted.  Well  may 
Coleridge  have  said  that  Chapman's  Homer  is  as  truly  an 
original  poem  as  The  Faery  Queen.  Indeed  it  is  precisely  on 
this  score  of  originality,  which  was  not  to  be  had  except  in 
these  very  definite  departures  from  the  spirit  and  the  letter  of 
his  text,  that  Chapman  has  been  most  severely  criticized. 
W^hen    all    has    been    said,    however,    concerning   Chapman's 

'  For  comparison,  here  is  the  same  passage  in  the  version  of 
Lang,  Leaf  and  Myers:  "Then  great  Hector  of  the  glancing  helm 
answered  her:  Surely  I  take  thought  fcr  all  these  things,  my  wife;  but 
I  have  very  sore  shame  of  the  Trojans  and  Trojan  dames  with  trailing 
robes,  if  like  a  coward  I  shrink  away  from  battle.  Moreover  mine 
own  soul  forbiddeth  me,  seeing  I  have  learnt  ever  to  be  valiant  and 
fight  in  the  forefront  of  the  Trojans,  winning  my  father's  great  glory 
and  mine  own.  Yea  of  a  surety  I  know  this  in  heart  and  soul;  the 
day  shall  come  for  holy  Ilios  to  be  laid  low,  and  Priam  and  the  folk  of 
Priam  of  the  good  ashen  spear.  Yet  doth  the  anguish  of  the  Trojans 
hereafter  not  so  much  trouble  me,  neither  Hekabe's  own,  neither 
King  Priam's,  neither  my  brethren's,  the  many  and  brave  that  shall 
fall  in  the  dust  before  their  foemen,  as  doth  thine  anguish  in  the  day 
when  some  mail-clad  Achaian  shall  lead  thee  weeping  and  rob  thee  of 
the  light  of  freedom.  So  shalt  thou  abide  in  Argos  and  ply  the  loom 
at  another  woman's  bidding,  and  bear  water  from  fount  Messeis  or 
Hypereia,  being  grievously  entreated,  and  sore  constraint  shall  be 
laid  upon  thee." 


278        TRANSLATION,  VERSE  AND  PROSE 

"barbarizing  of  Homer"  and  transmuting  with  a  high  Teu- 
tonic hand  the  Iliad  into  a  species  of  Niehelungen  Lied,  it 
may  be  doubted  if  the  age  of  Shakespeare  could  have  pro- 
duced a  poet  better  fitted  for  the  work.  Jonson,  or  possibly 
Drayton,  alone  combined  the  scholarship,  the  industry,  and 
the  poetic  instinct  for  such  a  task;  but  Jonson  wanted  the 
generous  heroic  spirit  that  sustains  the  pages  of  Chapman; 
and  Drayton,  with  all  that  he  might  have  gained  in  clarity  of 
diction  over  Chapman,  is  as  little  likely  as  Spenser  himself 
to  have  escaped  (even  to  the  degree  to  which  Chapman  es- 
caped it)  the  fantasticality  of  thought  and  ornateness  of  treat- 
ment that  must  have  kept  every  true  Elizabethan  at  arm's 
length  from  the  simple  brevity  and  severe  sufficiency  of 
Homeric  art. 

No  other  poetical  translation  of  the  classics  in  this  age  is 
comparable  to  Chapman's  work,  although  two  excellent  prose 
translations,  North's  Plutarch  and  Holland's  Natural  His- 
tory of  Pliny,  deserve  places  beside  it.  Fuller  styled  Phile- 
mon Holland  "the  translator  general  of  his  age,  so  that  those 
books  alone  of  his  turning  into  English  will  make  a  country 
gentleman  a  competent  library."  Holland  lived  between 
1552  and  1637,  was  educated  at  Cambridge,  and  became  a 
school-master  at  Coventry.  His  translations  began  in  1600 
with  Livy's  Roman  History,  and  included,  besides  others, 
Plutarch's  Morals,  the  Twelve  Ccesars  of  Suetonius,  and 
Xenophon's  Cyropcedia.  Holland  also  translated  Camden's 
Britannia  into  English  in  1610,  and  enjoyed  the  popularity 
to  which  his  industry  and  faculty  of  cursive  and  graphic  writing 
entitled  him.  Sir  Thomas  North  was  an  older  man,  possibly 
born  as  early  as  1535.  He  did  not  survive  into  the  reign  of 
King  James.  As  a  younger  son  of  Roger,  the  second  Lord 
North,  Sir  Thomas  enjoyed  many  advantages;  he  published 
his  translation  oi  Plutarch's  Lives  in  1579.  This  famous  work 
was  not  translated  directly  out  of  the  Greek,  but,  as  the  title- 
page  declares,"  out  of  the  French"  of  Jaques  Amyot,  which  had 
appeared  in  1559.  North  had  the  advantage,  while  on  an  em- 
bassy with  his  father,  of  meeting  Amyot  who  was  then  Bishop 
of  Auxerre,  so  that  his  undertaking  was  well  advised.     With 


NORTH'S  "PLUTARCH"  279 

the  advantage  of  a  scholarly  and  in  the  main  remarkably  ac- 
curate version  of  an  incomparable  original,  North  contrived  to 
produce  a  truly  great  translation.  To  this  a  kindliness  of  spirit 
and  an  artless  directness  of  speech,  combined  with  a  fine  com- 
mand of  idiomatic  but  far  from  inelegant  English,  contributed 
in  no  small  degree.  North's  Plutarch  went  through  six  editions 
before  the  Restoration  and  remains  of  especial  interest  as  the 
source  whence  Shakespeare  derived  his  ancient  history.  The 
amount  of  Shakespeare's  obligation  extended  not  only  to  the 
subjects  of  his  well-known  plays,  Coriolanus,  Ccesar,  and 
Antony  and  Cleopatra,  but  likewise  to  suggestions,  classical 
names  for  his  dramatis  personae,  and  innumerable  allusions 
scattered  up  and  down  the  dramatist's  works.  Moreover, 
in  following  no  one  of  his  other  sources  has  Shakespeare 
changed  so  little  the  thought  and  borrowed,  so  often  in  loug 
passages,  the  verbal  raiment  of  another's  ideas.  Not  only 
does  he  take  over  bodily  North's  picturesque  and  effective 
vocabulary,  but  he  reproduces  his  turns  of  phrase  and  pecul- 
iarties  of  idiom,  his  arguments  and  figurative  illustrations. 
How  many  of  the  pictured  details  of  Enobarbus'  glowing 
speech  describing  Cleopatra's  pageant  on  the  river  Cydnus, 
Shakespeare  had  from  North's  translation  of  the  Life  of 
Antonius,  the  following  passage  will  disclose: 

She  disdained  to  set  forward  otherwise,  but  to  take  her  barge  in 
the  river  of  Cydnus;  the  poop  whereof  was  of  gold,  the  sails  of  purple, 
and  the  oars  of  silver,  which  kept  stroke  in  rowing  after  the  sound  of 
the  music  of  flutes,  howboys,  cithernes,  viols,  and  such  other  instru- 
ments as  they  played  upon  in  the  barge.  And  now  for  the  person  of 
herself,  she  was  laid  under  a  pavilion  of  cloth  of  gold  of  tissue,  ap- 
parelled and  attired  like  the  goddess  Venus  commonly  drawn  in 
picture:  and  hard  by  her,  on  either  hand  of  her,  pretty,  fair  boys 
apparelled  as  painters  do  set  forth  god  Cupid,  with  little  fans  in  their 
hands,  with  the  which  they  fanned  wind  upon  her.  Her  ladies  and 
gentlewomen  also,  the  fairest  of  them,  were  apparelled  like  the 
nymphs,  Nereids  (which  are  the  mermaids  of  the  waters)  and  like 
the  graces;  some  steering  the  helm,  others  tending  the  tackle  and  ropes 
of  the  barge,  out  of  the  which  there  came  a  wonderful  passing  sweet 
savor  of  perfumes,  that  perfumed  the  wharf-side  pestered  with  in- 
numerable multitudes  of  people.     Some  of  them  followed  the  barge 


28o        TRANSLATION,  VERSE  AND  PROSE 

all  along  the  river-side:  others  also  ran  out  of  the  city  to  see  her  com- 
ing in.  So  that  in  the  end,  there  ran  such  multitudes  of  people  one 
after  another  to  see  her,  that  Antonius  was  left  post  alone  in  the  mar- 
ket-place, in  his  imperial  seat,  to  give  audience:  and  there  went  a 
rumor  in  the  peoples'  mouths,  that  the  goddess  Venus  was  come  to 
play  with  the  god  Bacchus,  for  the  general  good  of  Asia. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  In  North  alone  among  his  sources 
Shakespeare  met  his  match;  and  there  are  passages  —  such 
as  the  famous  one  describing  the  death  of  Cleopatra  —  in 
which  Shakespeare  has  not  succeeded  in  bettering  his  original. 
North's  Lives  of  the  ISfoble  Grecians  and  Ro?nans,  "compared 
together  by  that  grave,  learned  philosopher  and  historiog- 
rapher, Plutarch  of  Chaeronea,"  as  the  title  runs,  is  a  noble 
monument  of  simple  and  dignified  old  English  and  a  quarry 
well  worthy  the  use  of  the  master-poet. 

Let  us  now  turn  to  some  of  the  translations  from  modern 
tongues.  Among  the  Italians  the  Eclogues  of  Mantuan  seem 
earliest  to  have  attracted  the  Elizabethan  translator  Turber- 
ville,  in  1567,  as  they  later  attracted  Spenser  to  imitation  in 
The  Shepherds'  Calendar.  With  the  eighties  came  the  influx 
of  the  lyric,  especially  the  sonnet,  which  was  more  frequently 
imitated  than  translated,  and  the  song  which  was  often  turned 
literally  into  the  northern  tongue,  syllable  for  syllable,  that 
it  might  be  sung  to  the  original  Italian  tune.  But  by  far  the 
most  important  poetical  translations  of  the  age  from  the  Italian 
were  those  of  the  epics  of  Tasso  and  Ariosto.  The  story  is 
related  how  young  Sir  John  Harington,  court  wit  and  privi- 
leged, from  the  queen's  having  stood  sponsor  to  him  at  his 
christening,  had  the  impertinence  to  translate  and  pass  from 
hand  to  hand  one  of  the  cantos  of  the  Orlando  Furioso,  to 
which  Ariosto  had  prefixed  the  warning  that  it  should  be 
avoided  "by  ladies  and  those  who  valued  ladies."  Brought 
to  the  ears  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  she  bade  Harington  to  take 
himself  home  and  not  dare  to  come  into  the  royal  presence 
until  he  could  bring  back  with  him  a  complete  translation  of 
the  Orlando.  This  the  clever  young  rascal  accomplished  in 
haste  and  with  ease  and  thus  regained  his  royal  god-mother's 
favor.      Readiness  and  facility  rather  than  any  great  poetic 


HARINGTON'S  "ORLANDO  FURIOSO"      281 

power  characterize  Harington's  Orlando  Furioso,  which  was 
printed  in  1591  and  enjoyed  no  httle  fame.  Harington  pre- 
serves the  ottava  rtma  of  the  original,  but  makes  coarser  the 
irony  and  humor  of  the  ItaHan  poet.  A  witty  and  capable 
preface,  called  An  Apology  for  Poetry,  precedes  the  translation. 
Here  Harington  discourses  in  justification  of  epics  such  as  the 
Orlando,  and  upholds  his  brief  for  poetry  at  large  with  argu- 
ments against  the  Philistines  which,  as  has  well  been  said, 
men  of  Sidney's  and  Harington's  intellectual  caliber  do  not 
waste  their  time  in  employing  to-day.  The  Orlando  In- 
amorata of  Boiardo  was  indifferently  translated  by  Robert 
Tofte  in  1598.  It  has  been  described  as  "singularly  unequal" 
but  not  without  "dexterity  of  versification."  Tofte  also 
translated  Two  Tales  from  Ariosto  and  other  Italian  works. 
As  to  Tasso,  a  faithful  if  rather  unpoetical  version  of  the  first 
five  cantos  of  La  Gerusalemne  Liberata  was  made  by  Richard 
Carew,  a  Cornish  gentleman  in  1594,  to  be  followed  six  years 
later  by  the  famous  and  enduring  rendering  of  the  entire  work 
by  Edward  Fairfax.  With  Tasso's  pastoral  Aminta,  trans- 
lated by  Abraham  Fraunce  in  1587,  //  Pastor  Fido  of  Guarini 
by  one  Dymock  in  1602,  and  the  Satires  of  Ariosto  done  into 
English  by  the  pamphleteer  Gervais  Markham,  we  complete 
an  enumeration  of  the  more  important  translations  from 
Italian  poets. 

Elizabethan  translation  of  Italian  prose  began  earlier  and 
is  far  bulkier.  It  may  be  said  that  English  translations, 
adaptations,  and  imitations  of  the  Italian  novellieri  constituted 
by  far  the  most  popular  reading  of  the  period  of  Shakespeare's 
childhood,  contributing  sources,  it  has  been  estimated,  to 
practically  a  third  of  the  drama,  and  furnishing  an  inexhausti- 
ble model  and  inspiration  for  English  fiction  and  poetry. 
The  typical  Elizabethan  example  of  a  collection  of  Italian 
novelle  is  The  Palace  of  Pleasure,  "beautified,  adorned  and 
well  furnished  with  pleasant  histories  and  excellent  novels 
selected  out  of  divers  good  and  commendable  authors,"  by 
William  Painter,  1566.  Painter  was  a  school-master  at  Seven- 
oaks  and  had  first  projected  his  book  in  1562.  A  later  com- 
pleted edition  of  this    popular  work    contains  one  hundred 


282         TRANSLATION,  VERSE   AND   PROSE 

and  one  tales,  "partly  translations  and  partly  imitations  of 
Italian  novelle"  and  this  is  generally  the  character  of  these 
collections  of  stories.  There  were  upwards  of  a  dozen  such, 
imitated  and,  in  the  quaint  phrase  of  the  day,  "forged  only 
for  delight,"  up  to  the  time  when  Shakespeare  began  his 
dramatic  career;  and  they  were,  of  course,  his  natural  sources. 
Among  the  more  important  were  Certain  Tragical  Discourses, 
the  work  of  Sir  Geoffrey  Fenton,  1567;  The  Forest  or  Collec- 
tion of  Histories,  by  Thomas  Fortescue,  and  The  Rock  of 
Regard,  by  George  Whetstone,  both  in  1571;  A  Pettie  Palace 
of  \(jeorge^  Pettie  his  Pleasure,  1 576;  A  Courtly  Controversy 
of  Cupid's  Cautels,  containing  five  tragical  histories,  by  Henry 
Wotton;  also  Barnabe  Riche  his  Farewell  to  the  Military  Pro- 
fession in  eight  novels,  1581,  and  Whetstone's  Heptameron  of 
Civil  Discourses,  1582.  Turberville's  Tragical  Tales  are  in 
verse.  Single  stories  were  many  and  gradually  developed 
from  mere  translations  such  as  Arthur  Brooke's  poetical  ver- 
sion of  Romeus  and  "Juliet,  1 562,  or  the  Excellent  History  of 
Euryalus  and  Lucretia,  1 567,  to  original  stories  purporting 
to  be  translations  like  Gascoigne's  Adventures  of  Master  Ferdi- 
nando  Jeronimi,  1572,  originally  Freeman  Jones,  and  more 
accurately  Gascoigne  himself. 

The  Italian  authors  whose  work  appears  in  these  English 
translations  and  imitations  are  many.  Thus  Whetstone 
derives  his  Heptameron  mainly  from  the  Hecatommithi  of 
Cinthio;  Barnabe  Riche  draws  chiefly  on  Bandello;  while 
Painter  harks  back  to  Boccaccio  as  well  as  Bandello,  although 
both  he  and  Fenton  appear  to  have  derived  most  of  their  ma- 
terial through  the  intermediary  of  similar  collections  in  French 
by  Belleforest  and  Boisteau.  In  tracing  a  play  through  its 
foregoing  versions  as  they  appear  in  these  collections,  English, 
French,  and  Italian,  it  is  not  always  an  easy  matter  to  discover 
which  was  the  probable  original.  In  the  case  of  Shakespeare, 
fortunately,  such  is  his  customary  fidelity  to  his  source,  that 
he  is  more  readily  followed  than  almost  any  dramatist  of  his 
day.  For  example,  the  tragical  tale  of  the  ill-starred  lovers, 
Romeo  and  Juliet,  had  been  told  first  to  Western  Europe  by 
Masuccio  di  Salerno,  soon  after  1470;    by  Luigi  da  Porto,  in 


THE   "PALACE  OF   PLEASURE"  283 

his  story,  La  Giulietta,  in  1 535;  and  by  Bandello,  in  his 
Novelle  in  1 554.  From  the  last,  it  was  translated  into  French 
by  Boisteau  to  form  one  of  the  stories  of  Fran9ois  de  Belle- 
forest's  Histoires  Tragiques,  1 559.  Three  years  later,  Arthur 
Brooke  translated  the  story  into  English  verse;  and,  in  1567, 
it  appeared  in  Painter's  Palace  of  Pleasure.  The  essentials 
of  the  story  have  been  found  in  a  Greek  romance  of  the  second 
century,  Ahrocomas  and  Anthia,  by  Xenophon  of  Ephesus. 
But  all  this  learning  is  to  little  purpose:  Shakespeare's  source 
was,  as  usual  with  him,  the  nearest  and  most  obvious,  Brooke's 
English  poem,  not  without  a  knowledge,  however,  of  the  tale 
as  related  by  Painter  and  Bandello.  Thus  it  is  that  Painter 
garrulously  straggles  through  the  beginnings  of  a  well-known 
story : 

The  family  of  the  Capellets  .  .  .  was  at  variance  with  the  Montes- 
ches  which  was  the  cause  that  none  of  that  family  repaired  to  that 
banquet  but  only  the  young  gentleman,  Romeo,  who  came  in  a  mask 
after  supper  with  certain  other  young  gentlemen.  And  after  they 
had  remained  a  certain  space  with  their  vizards  on,  at  length  they 
did  put  off  the  same.  .  .  .  But  by  means  of  the  torches  which 
burned  very  bright,  he  was  by  and  by  known  and  looked  upon  of  the 
whole  company,  but  especially  of  the  ladies,  for  besides  his  native 
beauty  wherewith  nature  had  adorned  him,  they  marvelled  at  his 
audacity,  how  he  durst  presume  to  enter  so  secretly  into  the  house  of 
that  family  which  had  so  little  cause  to  do  him  any  good.  Notwith- 
standing the  Capellets,  dissembling  their  malice,  either  for  the  honor 
of  the  company  or  else  for  respect  of  his  youth,  did  not  misuse  him 
either  in  word  or  deed:  by  means  whereof  with  free  liberty  he  beheld 
and  viewed  the  ladies  at  his  pleasure,  which  he  did  so  well  and  with 
grace  so  good  as  there  was  none  but  did  very  well  like  the  presence 
of  his  person.  And  after  he  had  particularly  given  judgment  upon 
the  excellency  of  each  one  according  to  his  affection,  he  saw  one 
gentlewoman  amongst  the  rest  of  surpassing  beauty  who  (although 
he  had  never  seen  her  before)  pleased  him  above  the  rest;  and  [he] 
attributed  unto  her  in  heart  the  chiefest  place  for  all  perfection  and 
beauty,  and  feasting  her  incessantly  with  piteous  looks,  the  love  which 
he  bare  to  his  first  gentlewoman  [the  "unexpressive"  Rosaline]  was 
overcomen  with  this  new  fire  that  took  such  nourishment  and  vigor 
in  his  heart  as  he  was  not  able  ever  to  quench  the  same  but  by  death 
only. 


284         TRANSLATION,  VERSE   AND   PROSE 

But  poetry  and  fiction  by  no  means  represent  the  sole 
varieties  of  Italian  literature  translated  by  Elizabethans.  A 
list  of  "miscellanea,"  after  mention  of  these,  includes  nearly 
four  hundred  numbers  and  is  subdivided  into  "theology, 
science  and  the  arts,  grammars  and  dictionaries,  voyages, 
history  and  politics,  manners  and  morals."  It  represents 
works  as  diverse  as  Sir  Thomas  Hoby's  excellent  translation 
of  The  Courtier  of  Castiglione  and  trifles  innumerable,  such 
as  A  Treatise  "concerning  the  use  and  abuse  of  dancing," 
and  A  Joyful  Jewel  "containing  preservatives  for  the  plague." 
Most  notable  among  other  Elizabethan  translations  from 
Italian  prose  works  of  importance  may  be  named  Fenton's 
version  of  Guiccardini's  JVars  of  Italy,  1579;  Macchiavelli's 
Art  of  War,  by  Peter  Whitehorne,  1573;  and  the  same  author's 
Florentine  History,  translated  by  Thomas  Bedingfield  in  1595. 
The  Prince,  most  famous  and  influential  of  Macchiavelli's 
works,  seems  not  to  have  been  translated  in  Shakespeare's 
time. 

As  to  Spanish,  after  the  early  vogue  of  Guevara  (whose 
Golden  Book  of  Marcus  Aurelius  was  translated  by  Lord 
Berners  in  the  reign  of  Henry  VIII),  and  after  the  personal 
influence  of  the  Spanish  humanist  Vives,  exerted  during  his 
residence  at  Oxford  in  the  same  reign,  the  earliest  influence 
of  the  peninsula  upon  England  was  exercised  in  the  transla- 
tions, by  such  men  as  Frampton,  Thomas,  and  Nichols,  of 
Spanish  accounts  of  exploration  and  discovery  in  new  lands; 
material  in  short  of  the  kind  later  to  be  arranged  and  codi- 
fied by  Hakluyt  himself.  A  considerable  number  of  Spanish 
religious  books  were  translated  too,  chiefly  of  a  type  heretical 
in  their  own  land.  Nor  were  the  mystics  and  Catholics 
without  their  translator  of  the  devotional  tracts  of  Fray  Luis 
de  Granada,  the  famous  Dominican,  in  Richard  Hopkins. 
Sidney  and  his  circle  were  interested  in  Spanish;  though  only 
a  couple  of  the  lyrics  of  the  Arcadia  are  directly  traceable  to 
the  Diana  of  Montemayor,  the  story  at  large  shows  an  ac- 
quaintance with  the  Spanish  pastoral  romance.  Translations 
of  various  romances  of  chivalry,  the  Amadis  de  Gaule,  Pal- 
merin  d'Oliva,  and  Palmerin  of  England,  were  made  by  An- 


BORROWINGS  FROM  FRANCE  285 

? 

thony  Munday,  with  other  help,  to  regale  the  humbler  readers 

of  English  fiction.  These  date  between  1588,  when  his 
Palladino  of  England  appeared,  and  1619,  when  Primaleon 
of  Greece,  "son  to  Palmerin  d'Oliva,"  concluded  the  series. 
But  by  far  the  most  important  translation  from  the  Spanish 
was  the  vigorous  and  able  version  of  Cervantes'  masterpiece 
published  by  Thomas  Shelton  in  1612  under  the  title  The 
Delightful  History  of  the  Witty  Knight,  Don  Quixote.  This 
admirable  work,  though  begun  in  1607,  was  not  actually  com- 
pleted until  1620.  It  has  received  high  praise,  alike  for  the 
author's  extraordinary  grasp  of  the  difficult  original  and  for 
his  employment  of  idiomatic  English. 

Turning  to  France,  we  find  Arthur  Hall  translating  Homer 
from  the  French  in  1 581,  as  North  had  Englished  his  Plutarch's 
Lives.  Spenser  translated  Du  Bellay  and  incorporated  passages 
derived  from  the  pastorals  of  Marot  in  his  Shepherds'  Calendar; 
Lodge  w-as  a  notorious  borrower  from  Ronsard,  Phillipe  des 
Fortes,  and  other  French  lyrists;  while  in  the  drama.  Lady 
Pembroke  and  Thomas  Kyd  translated  the  Antoine  and  the 
Cornelie  of  the  French  Senecan,  Robert  Gamier.  But  most 
of  these  things  have  already  found  record  and  need  not  further 
delay  us.  An  important,  though  forgotten,  work  is  Edward 
Grimestone's  General  Inventory  of  the  History  of  France,  a 
compendium  of  De  Serres,  Matthieu,  Cayet,  and  others,  pub- 
lished in  1607.  Grimestone,  whose  works  are  now  of  the 
greatest  scarcity,  was  a  busy  translator  and  compiler,  publish- 
ing besides  other  works  a  History  of  the  Netherlands  in  1608 
and  a  History  of  Spain  four  years  later.  But  if  contemporary 
popularity  were  always  the  measure  of  worth,  the  fame  of 
Joshua  Sylvester  might  stand  beside  that  of  Spenser,  where 
many  of  his  contemporaries  placed  it,  for  his  translation  of 
the  scriptural  narrative  poem.  La  Semaine,  of  the  Huguenot 
poet  Du  Bartas.  This,  Sylvester  entitled  Du  Bartas  his 
Divine  JVeek.  It  appeared  in  completion  in  1606.  Sylvester 
emulated  the  manner  of  Spenser  and  was  not  without  his 
influence  on  William  Browne  and  even  on  Milton.  The 
translator  of  Du  Bartas  was  a  ready  versifier,  something  of  a 
concettist,  and  sustained  at  all  times  by  a  genuine  religious 


286         TRANSLATION,  VERSE  AND   PROSE 

enthusiasm.  He  belongs  to  the  tribe  later  represented  by 
Quarles,  and  Wither  in  the  uninspired  stretches  of  his  reli- 
gious verse. 

Among  Elizabethan  translations  from  the  French,  the 
most  famous  is  Florio's  Montaigne.  Florio's  father  was  a 
Florentine  Protestant  who  fled  from  Italy  on  account  of  his 
religion.  His  son  John,  who  was  about  the  age  of  Spenser, 
was  educated  at  Oxford,  enjoyed,  like  Shakespeare,  the  literary 
patronage  of  Southampton,  and  married  a  sister  of  the  poet 
Daniel.  In  the  reign  of  James,  Florio  became  reader  in 
Italian  to  Queen  Anne.  Florio's  Translation  of  the  Essais 
of  Montaigne  was  published  in  1603;  and  while  not  so  accu- 
rate as  that  of  Charles  Cotton,  1686,  has  qualities  of  individ- 
uality that  will  insure  it  a  place  among  the  great  translations 
of  a  translating  age.  The  authenticity  of  the  signature  of 
Shakespeare  in  the  copy  of  Florio's  Montaigne  in  the  British 
Museum  has  been  called  into  question.  But  we  may  still 
feel  sure,  from  the  well-known  passage  in  The  Tempest  (that 
in  which  Gonzalo  describes  an  ideal  republic),  that  this  was 
one  of  the  books  that  Shakespeare  read. 

But  when  all  has  been  said,  the  richest  prose  product  of 
the  Elizabethan  age,  indeed  of  any  age  or  language,  is  the 
Authorized  Version  of  the  Bible  in  English.  Among  the 
thousands  of  volumes  of  commentary —  religious,  antiquarian, 
and  philological, —  that  have  been  written  upon  this  corner- 
stone of  Christianity,  but  little  comparatively  has  been  said  until 
of  late  of  its  transcedent  position  as  an  English  classic  or  of  the 
deep  and  abiding  effect  which  it  has  worked,  whether  directly 
or  indirectly,  upon  English  prose  style;  and  a  feeling,  far  from 
improper,  of  awe  and  reverence  has  conspired  to  deter  many 
from  a  treatment  of  this  book  as  we  treat  others,  although  the 
reasonablenss^pf  such  a  proceeding  must  be  plain  to  any  stu- 
dent of  history.  The  thirty-nine  distinct  parts  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  the  twenty-seven  of  the  New,  form  the  extant 
literature  of  a  whole  people  during  a  period  of  over  a  thousand 
years.  As  such  we  need  not  be  surprised  to  find  no  family 
likeness  of  parts,  either  in  style,  matter,  or  mode  of  treatment. 
The  Bible  contains  legend,  history,  biography,  poetry,  pro- 


TYNDALE'S"NEW  TESTAMENT"  287 

verbs,  parables,  philosophy,  and  ethical  and  political  injunc- 
tions. Many  of  the  books  are  exclusively  theological  or 
religious,  others  are  purely  narrative  or  lyrical.  The  Book 
of  Job  is  dramatic,  at  least  in  form.  With  all  this  diversity 
of  subject-matter,  the  first  thing  that  strikes  one  in  the  style 
of  the  English  Bible  is  the  extraordinary  quality  of  its  diction 
"remarkable,"  as  it  is,  "  for  clearness,  simplicity  and  strength." 
Homely,  plain,  and  Saxon  and  yet  endowed  v^^ith  a  dignity, 
a  grace  and  sweetness  which  may  be  imitated  but  never  ap- 
proached. So  widely  is  this  admirable  quality  of  diction 
acknowledged  that  the  late  Cardinal  Newman,  most  eminent 
of  Anglican  converts  to  Roman  Catholicism,  is  reputed  to  have 
once  asked,  "Who  wnll  say  that  the  uncommon  beauty  and 
marvellous  English  of  the  Protestant  Bible  is  not  one  of  the 
greatest  strongholds  of  heresy  in  this  country  ?" 

It  is  a  mistake  to  consider  the  Authorized  Version  as 
mainly  the  work  of  the  King  James  translators  in  161 1.  As  a 
matter  of  fact  the  Version  was  gradually  perfected  during  the 
greater  part  of  the  century  by  a  succession  of  eminent  theo- 
logians. The  first  of  these  was  William  Tyndale,  a  student 
of  Greek  under  Colet  and  Grocyn  at  Oxford,  later  a  pupil  of 
Erasmus  at  Cambridge.  Tyndale  was  a  man  with  one  idea  — 
the  translation  of  the  Bible  —  to  the  end  that  the  people  might 
know  Christ  from  the  pure  fountain-head.  Animated  with 
the  spirit  of  Wyclif,  he  endured  "poverty,  exile,  bitter  absence 
from  friends  and  innumerable  other  hard  and  sharp  fightings," 
and  finally  martyrdom  for  this  great  end;  for  he  was  burned 
at  the  stake  for  his  opinions,  at  Antwerp  in  1536.  Tyndale's 
New  Testament,  which  diflPered  from  all  previous  translations 
in  being  made  not  from  the  Latin  Vulgate  but  from  the  original 
Greek,  was  published  in  1525.  It  was  immediately  ordered 
suppressed  and  burned  by  Archbishop  Warham;  orders  very 
effectively  carried  out.  But  Tyndale  continued  his  labors, 
translating  parts  of  the  Old  Testament  which  were  variously 
published  and  making  a  definitive  revision  of  his  New  Testa- 
ment in  1534.  It  has  been  said  of  Tyndale  that  he  fixed  the 
literary  style  of  the  Bible. 

In  this  very  year  the  convocation  petitioned  the  king  to 


288         TRANSLATION,  VERSE  AND   PROSE 

authorize  a  translation  of  the  Bible  into  English,  and  Cranmer 
suggested  a  board  of  bishops  and  other  learned  men  to  super- 
intend the  undertaking.  This  came  to  nothing,  but  Thomas 
Cromwell,  then  secretary  of  state,  urged  Miles  Coverdale  to 
print  a  translation  on  which  he  had  long  been  engaged,  and 
this  appeared  in  1535,  the  first  complete  English  Bible,  and 
the  first  to  obtain  the  right  of  circulation  in  England.  Cover- 
dale  was  neither  the  scholar  nor  the  extreme  Protestant  that 
Tyndale  had  been;  his  work  was  chiefly  editorial  and  super- 
visory, and  it  was  based  on  "sundry  translations  not  only 
Latin,  but  also  of  the  Dutch  [German]  interpreters "  and  on 
Tyndale.  Two  revised  editions  of  Coverdale's  Bible  appeared 
in  1537.  In  the  same  year  appeared  a  completion  of  Tyn- 
dale's  work,  known  as  the  Matthews'  Bible  from  the  name 
which  stands  at  the  end  of  the  dedication,  but  apparently  the 
work  of  one  John  Rogers.  This  work,  like  Coverdale's,  was 
dedicated  to  King  Henry  VIII,  and  furnished  w^th  marginal 
comments  of  a  somewhat  contentious  nature.  It  was  allowed. 
Cromwell  again  commissioned  Coverdale  to  revise  the  Bible 
and  in  1539  appeared  the  Great  Bible,  as  it  was  called,  from  the 
large  size  of  the  volume  and  its  sumptuous  character.  The 
edition  of  1540  contains  an  Introduction  by  Cranmer  and  is 
sometimes  known  as  Cranmer  s  Bible.  Copies  of  this  Bible 
were  set  up  in  every  church  and  the  services  even  w^ere  deserted 
at  times  by  those  eager  to  read  for  themselves  the  word  of  God. 
Numerous  editions  of  the  Great  Bible  followed  in  the  next 
two  years  (there  were  six  in  1540  and  1541  alone);  and  from 
its  appearance  must  be  dated  that  familiar  acquaintance  with 
the  Bible  and  love  of  its  very  word  which  has  since  especially 
characterized  English  speaking  people.  Another  Bible  pre- 
cisely contemporary  with  the  Great  Bible  was  the  work  of  an 
Oxford  scholar  named  Richard  Taverner,  who  made  some 
valuable  corrections  in  the  New  Testament,  but  revised  the 
Old  mainly  by  reference  to  the   Vulgate. 

In  the  reactionary  years  towards  the  close  of  Henry's 
reign  the  reading  of  the  Bible  was  forbidden;  all  Bibles  bear- 
ing Tyndale's  name  were  ordered  to  be  destroyed,  and  Cover- 
dale's  New  Testament  was  added  to  this  condemnation.    The 


THE  "GENEVA"  AND  THE  "BISHOPS'  BIBLE"  289 

reign  of  Edward  removed  these  restrictions  and  revived  the 
publication  of  the  Bible.  Though  no  new  version  appeared 
in  this  reign,  there  were  thirteen  editions  of  the  Bible  com- 
plete, and  thirty-five  of  the  New  Testament.  With  the  acces- 
sion of  Mary,  the  reaction  set  in  again.  Rogers  and  Cranmer 
Vvere  executed;  and  Coverdale,  now  Bishop  of  Exeter,  escaped 
with  difficulty  overseas,  settling  at  last  with  other  English 
fugitives  in  Geneva,  where  Calvin  and  Beza  were  holding 
Protestant  sway.  There  Coverdale  proceeded  with  his  life 
work  of  Bible  revision.  But  the  greater  part  of  the  labor  fell 
to  younger  hands,  William  Whittingham  (who  was  married 
to  Calvin's  sister),  in  collaboration  with  other  English  scholars 
completed  the  work,  publishing  the  Geneva  Bible  in  1560, 
These  revisers  were  especially  aided  fn  their  labors  by  the 
Latin  translation  of  Theodore  Beza,  the  most  eminent  Biblical 
scholar  then  living  and,  as  might  be  expected,  their  marginal 
commentary  was  Calvinistic  in  tone.  The  Geneva  Version 
long  remained  the  popular  Bible  for  home  reading  and  exerted 
no  inconsiderable  influence  on  the  4t^thorized  Version. 

With  the  accession  of  Elizabeth  a  new  official  Bible  was 
needed;  and  Archbishop  Parker  with  a  group  of  learned  men, 
for  the  most  part  dignitaries  of  the  English  Church,  set  about 
a  revision  of  the  Great  Bible.  This  was  accomplished  by  1568 
and  is  known  as  the  Bishops'  Bible:  it  at  once  superseded  the 
Great  Bible  in  the  churches,  but  was,  owing  to  the  method  of 
its  revision,  wanting  in  uniformity  and  somewhat  uneven  in 
execution.  The  Bishops'  Bible  by  no  means  supplanted  the 
Geneva  Version  in  popular,  and  especially  in  Puritan,  esteem. 

Although  the  Romanist's  point  of  view  did  not  favor  a 
popular  reading  of  the  Scriptures,  such  was  the  contemporary 
interest  in  a  knowledge  of  the  book  of  books  that  an  English 
Bible,  neither  the  work  of  English  bishops  nor  of  Calvinistic 
divines,  became  a  demand  of  the  moment.  The  preparation 
of  this  version  was  naturally  given  to  the  English  scholars  of 
the  seminary  which  had  been  founded,  first  at  Douay  and  con- 
tinued later  at  Rheims  (though  it  returned  to  Douay)  by  the 
Jesuits,  for  the  ostensible  purpose  of  bringing  about  the  recon- 
version of  England  to  the  Roman  faith.     The  New  Testa- 


290         TRANSLATION,  VERSE  AND  PROSE 

ment  of  the  Douay  Bible  appeared  in  1582;  but  the  work  was 
not  complete  until  the  year  1609.  Gregory  Martin  and  other 
Oxford  scholars,  members  of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  were,  in  the 
main,  responsible  for  it.  This  translation  was  made  not  from 
the  Hebrew  and  Greek  of  the  original,  but  from  the  Latin 
Vulgate  on  the  ground  that  this  was  the  Bible  of  Jerome  and 
Augustine  and  therefore  the  true  version  of  the  Roman  Church. 

Lastly  we  reach  the  Authorized  Version  of  161 1,  the  Bible 
which  served  all  English  speaking  Christians  (save  commu- 
nicants of  the  Church  of  Rome),  until  the  Revised  Version  of 
1 88 1.  The  scheme  of  revision,  for  much  of  which  King 
James  must  be  held  personally  responsible,  included  a  board 
of  some  fifty  revisers  of  Oxford,  Cambridge,  and  London,  and 
involved  not  only  independent  work,  but  frequent  consulta- 
tion and  comparison.  The  revisers  were  instructed  that  the 
Bishops'  Bible  was  "to  be  followed,  and  as  little  altered  as 
the  original  will  permit."  Though  other  versions  might  be 
used  "when  they  agree  better  with  the  text  than  the  Bishops' 
Bible."  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  King  James  revisers  had  as 
little  liberty  assigned  them  as  our  own  recent  revisers,  and 
they  took  less.  Two  features  of  the  Authorized  Version  were 
its  omission  of  all  marginal  commentary,  and  its  adoption 
from  the  Geneva  Version  of  the  division  of  the  chapters  into 
verses.  Another  feature  was  its  retention  of  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal terms  which  Tyndale  had  violently  banished.  The  supe- 
riority of  the  Authorized  Version  over  all  others  in  literality,  in 
its  freedom  from  sectarian  or  party  zeal,  and  in  literary  style 
is  beyond  dispute  or  cavil,  and  no  words  could  exaggerate  its 
potent  and  marvelous  influence  on  English  religion  and  litera- 
ture alike. 

If  the  question  be  asked.  How  could  such  a  perfect  result 
be  brought  about  under  such  circumstances  ?  several  reasons 
may  be  assigned.  First,  the  nature  of  the  original,  ofi'ering  not 
only  a  subject-matter  involving  the  most  interesting  of  all 
topics  but  a  style  in  many  parts  for  the  equal  of  which  we  may 
look  in  vain  through  the  literatures  of  the  world.  Secondly, 
the  real  piety  of  the  translators  and  revisers,  infusing  into  them 
a  wholesome  awe  in  the  prosecution  of  their  great  task  and  a 


THE  "AUTHORIZED  VERSION"  OF  THE  BIBLE  291 

painstaking  care,  lest  they  should  impair  the  truth  and  beauty 
of  the  word  of  God.  Third,  the  state  of  the  English  language, — 
that  of  a  vigorous  adolescence,  alike  removed  from  the  stutter- 
ing childhood  of  multiform  Anglo-Saxon  and  from  the  conven- 
tional and  somewhat  trite  phraseology  that  marks  every  highly- 
lettered  tongue.  And  finally,  the  character  of  the  age  that 
produced  Shakespeare,  Bacon,  Jonson,  and  Spenser,  all 
writers,  be  it  remembered,  of  superlative  prose.  To  expatiate 
upon  this  last  point  would  be  to  tell  the  history  of  the  whole 
century;  suffice  it  to  say,  that  it  is  the  age  that  has  not  yet 
ceased  to  believe  nor  yet  begun  to  conceive  itself  possessed  of 
all  knowledge  which  alone  could  have  produced  this  inimita- 
ble translation  of  an  inimitable  work. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

HISTORY,    DIVINITY,    AND    OTHER     PROSE    OF 
CONTEMPORARY    COMMENT 

THE  opening  chapter  of  this  book  treated  of  the  literature 
of  fact,  that  more  or  less  Hterary  reflection  of  past 
tradition  that  we  call  history,  and  present  exploit,  especially 
in  the  way  of  maritime  and  its  attendant  military  adventure. 
The  Elizabethan  conception  of  history  as  exemplified  in  the 
pages  of  Holinshed  or  Stow  is  crude  in  the  extreme.  It  neither 
discriminates  nor  chooses,  but  takes  whatever  has  been  chron- 
icled before,  without  hesitancy  or  question;  and  it  knows  no 
ordering  of  material  save  the  chronological  sequence  of  events. 
But  no  age  could  scrutinize  and  study  the  past,  alike  of  Eng- 
land and  of  foreign  and  ancient  nations,  as  did  this  age,  and 
remain  blind  to  the  fatuousness  of  so  childish  a  handling  of 
historical  material.  Sir  Thomas  More  had  already  presaged 
better  things  in  his  History  of  Richard  III;  and  Cavendish's 
Life  of  Wolsey,  though  more  in  the  nature  of  memoirs  than  of 
actual  history,  is  the  work  of  an  observer,  with  his  heart  in  his 
subject  and  a  natural  aptitude  for  direct  narrative.  Towards 
the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign  a  conception  of  history  superior 
to  that  of  mere  chronicles  and  annals  began  to  obtain.  The 
learned  antiquary,  William  Camden,  patron  of  Ben  Jonson, 
had  already  written  his  Britannia,  1586,  in  Latin,  although  it 
was  not  Englished  until  Holland's  version  of  1610.  Camden's 
Britannia  is  not  history,  but  an  antiquarian  topography  of 
Britain.  But  the  ideal  of  research  which  such  a  work  involved 
(an  ideal  which  it  has  been  affirmed  that  Camden  derived  from 
a  brief  personal  acquaintance  with  the  famous  Flemish  geog- 
rapher, Abraham  Ortelius,  who  visited  England  in  1577) 
was  something  obviously  applicable  to  the  pursuit  and  writing 
of  history.  Camden's  Britannia  enjoyed  an  immediate  suc- 
cess,  reaching  a  third  edition  in   1590  and  being  reprinted 

292 


SIR   JOHN  HAYWARD  293 

abroad.  His  later  Annals  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  1615,  exempli- 
fied his  method,  satisfactorily  applied  to  the  history  of  his  own 
time,  and  forms  with  his  Remains  concerning  Britain,  1605 
(alone  of  his  works  first  published  in  English)  an  honorable 
memorial  of  one  of  the  most  learned  and  respected  scholars 
of  his  age.  As  to  the  method  of  documentary  research  in  the 
early  years  of  King  James,  Fulke  Greville  relates  in  his  Life 
of  Sidney  that  he  purposed  writing  a  history  of  the  reign  of 
his  late  queen,  Elizabeth,  and  "adventured  to  move  the  secre- 
tary (Sir  Robert  Cecil)  that  I  might  have  his  favor  to  peruse 
all  obsolete  records  of  the  council-chest  from  those  times  down 
as  near  to  these  as  he  in  his  wisdom  should  think  fit."  Cecil 
asked  this  inquirer  after  historical  material  to  come  again  in 
three  weeks'  time,  and  on  this  second  visit  he  condescended 
"to  question  me": 

Why  I  would  dream  out  any  time  in  writing  a  story,  being  as  likely 
to  rise  in  this  time  as  any  man  he  knew;  then  in  a  more  serious  and 
friendly  manner  examining  me,  how  I  could  clearly  deliver  many 
things  done  in  that  time  which  may  perchance  be  construed  to  the 
prejudice  of  this.  I  shortly  made  answer  that  I  conceived  a  historian 
was  bound  to  tell  nothing  but  the  truth,  but  to  tell  all  truths  were  both 
justly  to  wrong  and  offend  not  only  princes  and  states,  but  to  blemish 
and  stir  up  against  himself  the  frailty  and  tenderness,  not  only  of 
particular  men  but  of  many  families  with  the  spirit  of  an  Athenian 
Timon;  and  therefore  showed  myself  to  be  so  far  from  being  dis- 
couraged with  that  objection  as  I  took  upon  me  freely  to  adventure 
all  my  own  goods  in  this  ship,  which  was  to  be  of  mine  own  build- 
ing. Immediately  this  noble  secretary  .  .  .  seriously  assured 
me,  that  upon  second  thoughts,  he  durst  not  presume  to  let  the  council- 
chest  lie  open  to  any  man  living. 

John  Hayward,  aftervvards  knighted  by  King  James,  was 
born  the  same  year  with  Shakespeare,  dying  in  1627,  one  year 
after  Bacon.  Educated  at  Pembroke  College,  Cambridge, 
Hayward  rose  to  a  certain  distinction  as  a  la^vyer  and  was 
patronized  and  encouraged  in  his  historical  labors  by  the  king. 
His  works  begin  with  a  History  of  the  First  Tear  of  Henry 
IF,  1599,  which  sent  him  to  the  Tower  for  some  ill-timed 
flattery  of  Essex.     He  wrote,  later,  the  lives  of  William  I, 


294     PROSE   OF  CONTEMPORARY  COMMENT 

William  II,  Henry  I,  and  Edward  VI,  besides  Annals  (of  the 
earlier  years)  of  Queen  Elizabeth.  Hayward  was  at  one  time 
associated  as  a  colleague  with  Camden  in  Chelsea  College, 
which  James  had  founded.  He  seems  to  have  caught  some- 
what Camden's  idea  of  research  and  makes  in  his  writings 
a  brave  show  of  learning;  but  from  a  want  of  any.  sense  of 
proportion  or  of  criticism,  his  efforts  serve  to  little  purpose. 
Hayward,  however,  set  himself  the  definite  task  of  rising  out 
of  the  slough  of  the  annalists  and  chroniclers  into  something 
like  the  literary  history  practised  by  the  ancients.  Livy  and 
Tacitus  thus  became  his  models  and  he  imitates  them  often 
in  that  wherein  they  are  least  defensible,  their  rhetoric  and 
their  formal  imaginary  oratorical  passages.  Bacon  records 
that  Queen  Elizabeth  inquired  of  him  as  to  Hayward's  "un- 
lucky first  attempt"  at  history,  "whether  there  were  no  treason 
contained  in  it."  To  which  Bacon  replied:  "For  treason 
I  can  not  deliver  opinion  that  there  is  any,  but  very  much 
felony."  And  when  her  majesty  asked  hastily,  "How  and 
wherein .?  I  told  her  the  author  had  committed  very  apparent 
theft;  for  he  had  stolen  many  of  his  sentences  and  conceits 
out  of  Cornelius  Tacitus." 

A  minor  historian  of  England  was  John  Speed,  the  con- 
tinuator  of  Stow's  Chronicle  down  to  the  accession  of  James. 
His  History  of  Great  Britain  dates  l6ll.  Daniel,  the  poet, 
was  likewise  the  author  of  a  lengthy  History  of  England  from 
the  Conquest  to  the  Reign  of  Edward  HI.  But  despite  his 
abilities  as  a  stylist,  Daniel  contributed  nothing  to  the  ad- 
vancement of  the  art  of  historical  writing.  The  greatest  piece 
of  historical  composition  of  the  reigns  of  Elizabeth  and  James 
is  Bacon's  History  of  Henry  VH .  In  this  short  essay  —  for 
it  is  not  much  more  —  the  writing  of  history  in  English  leaps 
with  a  bound  to  a  place  beside  Tacitus  and  Thucydides  him- 
self.^ But  this  was  the  work  of  Bacon's  latest  years  and, 
printed  in  162 1,  falls  beyond  us. 

Among  Elizabethan  histories  of  foreign  countries  it  is 
somewhat  difficult  to  distinguish  between  translators  and  those 
whose  compilations  have  a  greater  claim  to  originality.     A 

^  See  Spedding,  Works  of  Bacon,  vii,  4,  5. 


RALEIGH'S  "HISTORY  OF  THE  WORLD"  295 

busy  historian,  not  without  a  homely  merit  of  his  own,  was 
Edward  Grimestone,  already  mentioned  among  translators 
for  his  compilation  of  French  annals  into  a  portentous  volume 
entitled  a  General  Inventory  of  the  History  of  France,  1607. 
Whether  Grimestone's  History  of  the  Netherlands,  of  Spain, 
and  other  later  works  that  followed,  were  less  completely 
compilations,  we  are  not  at  present  in  possession  of  the  facts 
to  tell.  A  more  famous  work  in  its  day  was  The  General  His- 
tory of  the  Ottoman  Turks  by  Richard  Knolles,  fellow  of  Lincoln 
College,  Oxford,  and  later  Master  of  the  Gramm.ar  School 
at  Sandwich.  This  history  was  the  labor  of  ten  years  and 
appeared,  elaborately  printed  with  a  dedication  to  the  king  and 
embellished  with  "portraits"  of  the  sultans,  in  1603.  Knolles 
is  said  to  have  drawn  largely  on  "a  Latin  history  of  the  Turks 
published  at  Frankfort  in  1596."  His  relations  to  a  translation 
of  Georgievitz's  De  Turcarum  Morihus  by  H[enry]  Gough  in 
1570,  entitled  The  Offspring  of  the  House  of  the  Ottomans, 
might  be  worthy  of  inquiry. 

Scarcely  less  a  compilation,  but  in  literary  standing  and 
quality  far  above  these  works,  is  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  History 
of  the  fForU,  published  in  16 14.  Written  during  his  twelve 
years'  imprisonment  in  the  Tower  with  a  sentence  of  death 
suspended  over  his  head,  this  stupendous  work  is  yet  con- 
ceived in  a  spirit  of  leisure  and  pervaded  with  an  absorbed 
interest  in  matters  of  detail  that  is  simply  astounding  consid- 
ering the  circumstances.  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  was  born  about 
1552,  and  was  thus  a  year  or  two  older  than  Spenser  whose 
early  friend  he  was.  Handsome  in  person,  daring,  brilliant, 
and  unscrupulous  as  to  the  means  of  attaining  success,  Raleigh 
became  a  favorite  of  the  queen,  grew  rich  on  monopolies,  and 
was  spoiled  and  petted  by  fortune.  He  came  of  the  old  Devon- 
shire stock  of  sea-dogs  and  martial  heroes.  The  famous 
navigator.  Sir  Humphrey  Gilbert,  was  his  half-brother,  Sir 
Richard  Grenville  his  cousin.  Raleigh  had  fought  by  land 
against  Spain  in  Ireland  and  in  the  Netherlands;  and  he  had 
fought  with  the  Huguenots  in  France.  He  had  sailed  with  his 
brother  Gilbert  in  one  of  his  voyages  against  the  commerce 
of  Spain,  and  had  helped  the  Earl  of  Essex  "to  singe  the  Span- 


296     PROSE  OF  CONTEMPORARY  COMMENT 

ish  king's  beard"  at  Cadiz.  He  had  fitted  out  ships  for  the 
Armada  and  searched  for  fabulous  El  Dorado,  burning  Spanish 
towns  by  the  way.  Imprudence  in  espousing  the  claim  of  the 
Lady  Arabella  Stuart  to  the  crown  brought  about  the  fall  of 
this  enemy  of  Spain  early  in  the  reign  of  James;  and  his  con- 
viction of  high  treason  and  long  imprisonment  led  to  the  block 
at  last  in  1619.  Raleigh's  was  certainly  a  strangely  romantic 
career;  and  better  perhaps  than  in  greater  historic  figures 
can  we  discern  in  him  the  contradictions  and  contrasts  that 
make  the  age  of  Elizabeth  and  James  so  fascinating  and  in- 
explicable at  times.  Raleigh  was  deeply  interested  in  the  ex- 
ploitation of  England,  to  his  own  advantage  as  well  as  the 
empire's.  But  he  was  likewise  a  poet  possessed  of  a  "lofty 
and  insolent  vein,"  scorning  the  world,  its  snares  and  vanities. 
Raleigh  had  been  a  friend  of  Marlowe,  and  reputed  a  member 
of  a  club  of  atheists,  or  at  least  free-thinkers,  in  his  youth;  yet 
it  was  to  him  that  Spenser  confided  the  ethical  scheme  of  his 
ideal  of  a  moral  world  in  The  Faery  Queen;  and  The  History 
of  the  World  is  imbued  throughout  with  a  spirit  of  piety  which 
no  unbeliever  could  affect.  Raleigh's  History  has  been  called 
a  stupendous  work;  it  is  such  not  only  because  of  its  bulk 
(for  there  are  bulkier  Elizabethan  works),  but  because  of  the 
extraordinary  scope  of  its  plan  and  range  of  its  subject-matter. 
Indeed,  the  book  is  less  a  history  than  "a  series  of  dissertations 
on  law,  theology,  mythology,  magic,  war  and  the  ideal  form 
of  government,"  illustrated  by  an  exceedingly  diffuse  account 
of  the  rise  and  fall  of  several  of  the  great  empires  of  the  world. 
Raleigh  must  have  had  the  help  of  many  scholars  in  the 
assembling  of  the  material  at  least  for  this  huge  mass;  and 
Jonson  informs  us  that  he  had  his  share  in  the  portion  dealing 
with  the  Punic  Wars.  But  the  work,  however  unequal  in 
parts,  is  governed  by  the  imperative  spirit  of  Raleigh  through- 
out, whose  eloquence  (more  particularly  in  the  preface  and  in 
the  celebrated  apostrophe  to  death  with  which  the  book  ends), 
rises  to  court  comparisons  with  the  best  Elizabethan  and  later 
English  prose. 

Into  the  many  admirable  prose  writings  of  the  age  devoted 


STOWS  "SURVEY  OF  LONDON"  297 

to  antiquarian  studies  on  the  one  hand  and  statecraft,  either 
historically  considered  or  in  criticism,  on  the  other,  it  is  im- 
possible to  enter  here.  These  topics  belong  from  their  con- 
temporary conditions  less  to  the  domain  of  the  literature  of 
power  than  to  that  of  the  literature  of  knowledge,  and  although 
often  conceived  in  a  spirit  of  broad  and  philosophical  gener- 
alization, are  limited  none  the  less  by  the  occasions  that  pro- 
duced them.  During  the  latter  half  of  the  reign  of  Elizabeth 
an  informal  society  of  antiquarians  existed,  founded  by  Arch- 
bishop Parker;  its  ruling  spirits  were  Camden,  Speed,  Selden, 
and  Cotton.  Of  the  first  two  we  have  just  heard;  John  Sel- 
den, born  in  1584,  was  the  most  learned  of  legal  antiquaries. 
His  great  work  was  The  History  of  Tithes,  published  in  161 8. 
Selden  was  also  a  noted  wit;  but  his  Table  Talk  was  mostly 
the  gathering  of  his  later  years.  It  was  in  1598  that  Sir 
Thomas  Bodley,  a  diplomat  of  note,  made  his  offer  to  found  a 
library  in  the  University  of  Oxford;  this  was  accepted  and 
the  library  formally  opened  in  1602.  Sir  Robert  Bruce  Cot- 
ton was  an  enthusiast  in  the  collection  of  old  manuscripts.  He 
published  no  more  than  a  history  of  The  Reign  of  Henry  ///, 
and  this  in  1627.  But  most  of  his  extraordinary  hoard  of  old 
documents  were  acquired  during  the  later  years  of  Elizabeth's 
reign  and  the  earlier  of  James.  There  are  no  more  imperish- 
able memorials  of  the  love  of  learning  in  the  age  of  Shakespeare 
than  the  Bodleian  Library  at  Oxford  and  the  Cottonian  Manu- 
scripts of  the  British  Museum.  Among  Elizabethan  anti- 
quaries none  has  maintained  so  popular  a  reputation  and  one 
so  thoroughly  deserved  in  his  local  field  as  John  Stow,  the 
chronicler  and  the  antiquarian  of  old  London.  Stow  was 
originally  a  tailor,  but  was  led  by  a  passion  for  his  subject  to 
minute  and  personal  research  among  the  antiquities  and  mon- 
uments of  London  and  to  write  a  book,  absolutely  unparalleled 
in  its  kind.  Stow's  Survey  of  London  was  first  printed  in  1598 
and  is  the  starting-point  of  all  inquiry  into  the  subject  of  Eliz- " 
abethan  and  earlier  London.  Stow  is  so  intent  on  his  subject 
that  he  tells  it  well,  unconscious  of  his  force  and  directness. 
Like  his  fellow  chroniclers  Stow  takes  whatever  is  to  his  hand 


298     PROSE  OF  CONTEMPORARY  COMMENT 

in  the  work  of  his  predecessors,  content  that  he  be  meted  a  like 
measure  by  those  that  come  after.  Stow  has  been  pillaged 
assuredly  for  far  more  than  he  ever  borrowed. 

Singularly  gifted  and  versatile  was  Sir  Henry  Wotton,  a 
Kentish  gentleman,  younger  kinsman  of  Bacon  and  a  personal 
friend  of  Donne  whom  he  met  at  New  College,  Oxford.  Wot- 
ton was  much  abroad  in  the  service  of  the  state  and  his  breadth 
of  spirit  in  politics  as  in  religion  made  him  at  once  capable 
of  intimacy  with  scholars  such  as  Isaac  Casaubon,  with  whom 
he  lived  at  Geneva,  and  with  Cardinals  Bellarmine  and  Allen 
at  Rome.  Wotton  was  esteemed  and  trusted  by  King  James; 
and  his  devoted  attachment  to  the  service  of  his  sovereign's 
daughter,  the  beautiful  and  unhappy  Elizabeth,  Queen  of 
Bohemia,  was  the  romance  of  his  life.  On  his  retirement  from 
diplomatic  life  in  1624,  Wotton  became  Provost  of  Eton.  His 
literary  work  embraces  a  History  of  the  Republic  of  Venice,  a 
Life  of  Donne,  and  a  Treatise  on  Angling,  all  of  these  only 
projected  however,  although  the  last  two  were  carried  out  by 
Wotton's  friend  and  biographer,  Izaak  Walton.  Wotton's 
most  important  work  in  his  day  was  his  treatise  on  The  State 
of  Christendom,  printed  in  1637,  towards  the  close  of  his  life. 
The  Reliqiiice  JVottoniancB,  published  in  165 1,  includes  topics 
as  various  as  The  Elements  of  Architecture,  A  Survey  of  Ed- 
ucation, the  "Characters"  oftwo  or  three  historical  personages. 
Letters,  Aphorisms,  and  a  few  poems,  two  or  three  of  which 
—  among  them  the  fine  lines  to  the  Princess  Elizabeth  be- 
ginning "You  meaner  beauties  of  the  night" —  gained  a  lasting 
and  deserved  celebrity.  Wotton,  like  Selden  and  Bacon,  had 
the  gift  of  putting  things.  He  was  possessed,  too,  of  a  deli- 
cate critical  taste  for  poetry.  It  was  Wotton  who  first 
enthusiastically  approved  Comus;  and  it  is  fitting  that  this 
chivalrous,  scholarly,  and  capable  man  should  live  forever 
in  Walton's  fine  biography. 

Such  writings  as  these  of  Wotton  and  many  like  them  of 
less  conspicuous  literary  merit  are  best  described  under  a 
generic  title  such  as  the  prose  of  contemporary  comment; 
for  the  conditions  of  the  moment  begot  them  and,  while  they 
rise  in  dignity  of  subject-matter  and  in  care  of  composition 


WRITINGS  ON  EDUCATION  299 

above  the  grade  of  mere  pamphleteering,  their  interest  to  us 
must  remain  curious  and  historical  rather  than  strictly  literary. 
Thus  Richard  Mulcaster,  first  Master^of  the  Merchant  Tailors' 
School,  wrote  originally  and  eloquently  in  his  Positions  con- 
cerning the  Training  up  of  Children,  in  1581,  and  showed  him- 
self a  worthy  successor  of  Ascham  and  Elyot  in  a  subject  which 
we  now  call  pedagogy  and  dignify  with  many  technical  and 
professional  difficulties.  In  Mulcaster's  book  and  in  John 
Brinsley's  Ludus  Literarius,  1612,  will  be  found  many  a  new 
idea,  grown  old  to  be  rediscovered  by  the  historically  unin- 
formed of  our  own  discovering  age.  The  education  of  the 
young  has  always  been  an  absorbing  theme  to  pedagogues  and 
parents.  Even  the  great  Lord  Burleigh  turned  aside  from  the 
cares  of  practical  statecraft  to  pen,  in  admirably  phrased  and 
unadorned  English,  Ten  Precepts  to  his  Son  wherein  such 
apothegms  as  "Marry  thy  daughters  in  time  lest  they  marry 
themselves,"  and  "He  that  payeth  another  man's  debts  seeketh 
his  own  decay"  disclose  his  kinship  in  blood,  as  in  worldly 
sagacity,  to  his  great  nephew,  Francis  Bacon.  It  was  in  the 
year  of  the  Armada,  before  any  certain  work  of  Shakespeare's, 
that  Dr.  Timothy  Bright,  physician  to  St.  Bartholomew's  Hos- 
pital, set  forth  a  little  book  called  Character y:  An  Art  of  Short, 
Swift  and  Secret  Writing  by  Character,  and  thus  founded  the 
modern  art  of  stenography.  Many  a  "spurious  quarto"  of 
Shakespeare's  and  others'  plays  doubtless  owes  much  to  the 
art  of  Dr.  Timothy  Bright.  A  more  professional  work  of  the 
same  author  was  his  Treatise  on  Melancholy,  1586,  by  some 
supposed  to  have  suggested  Robert  Burton's  famous  Anatomy 
of  Melancholy  published  in  1621. 

Attention  has  been  specifically  called  of  late  to  a  remarkable 
series  of  state  documents  concerning  Ireland,  among  them 
Sidney's  defense  of  his  father's  administration  as  viceroy, 
Spenser's  dialogue,  and  later  papers  and  reports  by  Bacon, 
Sir  John  Davies,  Fynes  Moryson,  and  Sir  Thomas  Stafford. 
It  is  interesting  to  think  of  some  of  these  men  whom  we  remem- 
ber chiefly  for  their  poetry,  as  taking  their  part  in  government 
and  practising,  often  with  consummate  success,  the  difficult 
art  of  statecraft.     Spenser's  work  is  written  in  dialogue  form 


300     PROSE  OF  CONTEMPORARY  COMMENT 

and  is  entitled  A  View  of  the  State  of  Ireland.  It  was  licensed 
in  1598,  and  Is  a  clear  and  direct  piece  of  prose  writing  based 
upon  knowledge  and  remarkably  well  arranged  and  handled. 
In  Certain  Considerations  touching  the  Plantation  in  Ireland, 
1609,  Bacon  is  critical  of  the  administration  of  the  time.  Sir 
John  Davles,  in  his  Discovery  of  the  State  of  Ireland,  1613, 
contributes  a  history  of  the  country,  which  he  supplemented, 
in  1617,  with  an  account  of  the  Tyrone  rebellion.  More  per- 
sonal in  nature  and  for  the  most  part  well  below  the  literary 
level  are  the  several  diarists,  among  them  the  celebrated  astrol- 
oger. Dr.  John  Dee,  who  calculated  an  auspicious  day  for 
Queen  Elizabeth's  coronation  and  long  outlived  her;  Sir 
Robert  Naunton,  who  racily  sketched  in  his  Fragmenta  Re- 
galia, her  favorites;  and  Robert  Carey,  later  Earl  of  Mon- 
mouth, who  tells  in  lively  narrative  how  he  carried  the  news 
of  the  old  queen's  death  to  her  eagerly  expectant  successor. 
To  two  diaries,  that  of  John  Manninghamof  the  Middle  Tem- 
ple and  that  of  the  quack  physician  and  astrologer,  Dr.  Simon 
Forman,  a  peculiar  interest  attaches,  as  each  affords  us  con- 
temporary record  of  the  performances  of  plays  of  Shakespeare. 
The  notes  which  the  Scottish  poet,  William  Drummond  of 
Hawthornden,  made  concerning  the  life,  opinions,  and  literary 
gossip  of  Ben  Jonson,  who  visited  him  in  1619,  offer  us  the  best 
contemporary  picture  of  Shakespeare's  greatest  literary  com- 
petitor. It  is  fair  to  remember  that  these  Notes  of  Conversa- 
tions of  Ben  Jonson  were  neither  published  nor  intended  for 
publication  by  Drummond;  but  were  rescued  from  oblivion 
generations  after  the  Scottish  poet's  death.  The  Autobiography 
of  Sir  James  Melville,  the  diplomat,  deals  at  large  with  the 
history  of  Scotland  as  the  Diary  of  his  namesake,  the  reformer, 
deals  with  the  Scottish  church  in  his  time.  Both  works  were 
published  posthumously  and  are  of  greater  literary  preten- 
sions than  the  fragments  just  enumerated. 

Several  controversies,  more  or  less  literary  in  nature,  have 
found  mention  above.  Besides  the  Marprelate  dispute,  so 
drastically  suppressed,  and  the  personal  literary  duel  between 
Harvey  and  Nash,  there  was  the  old  academic  question  of 
classical  verse  as  the  vehicle  of  English  poetry,  and  the  long 


1 


SCOTT'S  "DISCOVERY  OF  WITCHCRAFT"    301 

Puritan  attack  on  the  stage  and  on  social  abuses.  Another 
controversy,  involving  more  serious  consequences  than  any 
matter  of  opinion,  was  the  semi-reHgious  question  involved  in 
the  Elizabethan  belief  in  witches.  In  1584  Reginald  Scott 
put  forth  an  elaborate  and  learned  work  entitled  The  Discovery 
of  fVitchcraft.  Scott  was  a  Kentish  esquire  and  justice  of  the 
peace,  and  left  behind  him  a  practical  little  treatise  on  the 
staple  of  Kent,  entitled  The  Hop  Garden,  1574.  It  was  in 
the  exercise  of  his  official  duties  that  Scott  was  drawn  into  an 
appreciation  of  the  enormities  and  injustice  that  frequently 
resulted  from  the  popular  notions  concerning  witchcraft;  and 
he  entered  heart  and  soul  into  the  question  on  this  impetus, 
and  with  a  large  mass  of  writings  on  the  subject  (such  as  those 
of  Bodin  and  Weier)  before  him.  But  Scott  was  ahead  of  his 
time.  He  was  denounced  with  singular  unanimity  by  the 
clergy;  and  King  James,  who  was  something  of  a  connoisseur 
in  witches  himself,  so  far  condescended  in  his  zeal  as  to  answer 
this  heretic  with  his  royal  hand  in  his  Demonology,  1597, 
wherein  he  pronounced  the  opinions  of  Scott  "damnable." 
This  excursion  of  King  James  into  demonology  was  by  no 
means  his  only  publication.  He  had  taken  part,  when  a  lad 
and  still  under  the  supervision  of  his  tutors,  in  the  discussions 
about  poetry  that  belonged  to  the  days  of  Sidney,  in  his  Essays 
of  a  Prentice  in  the  Divine  Art  of  Poetry,  1584.  And  a  few 
years  later,  in  1589,  he  displayed  the  interest  in  theology  that 
he  maintained  throughout  his  life  in  Meditations  on  Revela- 
tions. The  Bastlikon  Doron,  1599,  is  a  book  of  advice  to  his 
son,  crowded  with  marginal  references  to  the  classics  and  the 
Bible,  for  James  was  nothing  if  not  pedantic.  Although  it  is 
fair  to  add  that  even  in  this  James  was  not  conspicuous  ac- 
cording to  the  learned  fashion  of  his  day  —  or  of  ours,  if  the 
truth  be  confessed.  As  to  the  wise  saws  and  modern  instances 
of  this  book,  it  has  been  remarked  that  they  might  have  come 
with  better  grace  from  a  monarch  less  a  victim  to  favoritism. 
But  few  authors  can  stand  the  test  of  judgment  by  the  conduct 
of  their  lives.  Two  opinions  of  this  royal  author  stand  forth 
in  relief:  his  absolute  faith  in  the  divine  right  of  kings,  set 
forth  in  several  treatises;    and  his  hatred  of  the  new-fangled 


302     PROSE  OF  CONTEMPORARY  COMMENT 

habit  of  smoking,  denounced  in  A  Counterblast  to  Tobacco, 
1604.  As  to  his  controversy  with  Scott,  on  his  accession  to 
the  throne  James  took  a  thorough  means  of  silencing  his  adver- 
sary by  ordering  every  copy  of  The  Discovery  of  Witchcraft 
to  be  burnt.  Happily  for  Scott,  he  died  a  subject  of  Queen 
Elizabeth. 

Still  another  class  of  books  based  on  contemporary  ex- 
periences, and  of  the  greatest  possible  interest  to  the  student 
of  manners  and  of  the  past,  is  that  reported  in  the  several 
records  which  Elizabethan  travelers  by  land  into  foreign  parts 
have  left  of  their  journeys  and  observations.  The  earliest  of 
these  travelers  was  Fynes  Moryson,  a  gentleman  of  Lincoln- 
shire and  student  at  Cambridge,  who  obtained  a  license  to 
travel  in  1589;  and,  two  years  later,  started  on  a  series  of  jour- 
neys that  took  him  not  only  through  the  more  important  parts 
of  western  Europe  but  to  Copenhagen,  Danzig,  and  Cracow, 
and  then  to  Cyprus,  Jerusalem,  and  Constantinople.  Mory- 
son was  an  observant  and  leisurely  traveler.  It  was  his  custom 
to  reside  in  a  place  to  become  acquainted  with  it.  He  thus 
lived  at  one  time,  a  student  at  the  University  of  Leyden,  so- 
journed for  months  in  Rome,  studying  antiquities  under  the 
protection  of  the  English  Cardinal  Allen;  while  so  long  was 
his  stay  in  Constantinople,  he  tells  us,  that  he  had  contracted 
the  habit  —  necessary  for  his  protection  among  the  Turks  —  of 
keeping  his  eyes  fixed  upon  the  ground  and  never  looking  a  man 
in  the  face.  Like  a  true  traveler,  Moryson  was  interested  in 
everything:  polity,  manners,  national  traits,  methods  of  trans- 
portation, architecture,  diet,  apparel,  and  foreign  coinages. 
And  he  was  possessed  of  the  industry,  requisite  to  a  careful 
chronicling  of  all  that  he  saw,  and  a  homely  clarity  and  direct- 
ness of  expression,  not  unillumined  at  times  with  an  appreci- 
ative sense  of  humor.  Moryson  wrote  up  his  Itinerary  (as  it 
was  finally  called  on  publication  in  161 7)  no  less  than  three 
times;  first  in  Latin,  secondly  translated,  and  lastly  abbre- 
viated. The  work  is,  from  its  mass  of  detail,  of  enormous 
length  and  the  last  of  its  three  parts  remains  unreprinted  and 
partly  even  now  in  manuscript.  Earlier  therefore  in  print 
was  Thomas  Coryate  with  his  Crudities  Hastily  Gobbled  Up, 


BOOKS  OF  TRAVEL  303 

161 1,  the  account  of  the  author's  travels  a  year  or  two  previous, 
mainly  in  France  and  Italy,  Coryate,  after  failure  to  obtain 
his  degree  at  Oxford,  became  a  species  of  privileged  buffoon 
at  court  where  he  affected  w^himsicality  of  appearance,  speech, 
and  manner,  and  rivaled  in  repute  "Archie"  Armstrong 
whom  Jonson  called  "the  principal  fool  of  the  state."  From 
Coryate's  character  and  from  the  enormous  mass  of  semi- 
ironical  prefatory  matter  in  commendation  of  the  author  and 
his  w'ork  which  he  procured  at  the  hands  of  his  many  friends, 
Coryate's  Crudities  might  be  supposed  to  be  wholly  a  book  of 
fictitious  foolery.  Such  however  is  far  from  the  case.  Coryate 
tells,  for  the  most  part,  a  plain  unvarnished  tale,  by  no  means 
wanting  in  interest,  despite  the  fact  that  his  ways  have  been 
so  much  traveled  since  his  time.  Coryate  started  on  a  second 
tour  in  1612,  visiting  Constantinople,  Damascus,  and  Aleppo 
and  going  thence  by  caravan  to  Ispahan  and  Lahore,  and  visit- 
ing the  Great  Mogul,  by  whom  he  was  kindly  received.  But 
of  this  journey  w^e  know  only  by  a  brief  report  of  Purchas* 
Coryate  lost  his  life  by  fever  at  Surat  in  1617,  Of  less  interest 
is  the  narrative  entitled  The  Total  Discourse  of  the  Rare  Ad- 
ventures and  Painful  Perigrinations  of  William  Lithgow  first 
published  in  1614  and  detailing  an  extension  of  Coryate's  first 
journey  to  Jerusalem  and  Cairo.  Lithgow  likewise  went 
abroad  again  and,  although  his  life  was  saved  by  the  inter- 
vention of  an  English  consul,  it  was  not  until  he  had  endured 
torture  on  the  rack  at  the  hands  of  the  Inquisition  in  Spain  for 
his  Protestantism.  Lithgow's  style,  like  that  of  Coryate  is, 
at  times,  affected  and  absurdly  precious.  But  to  speak  of 
either  of  these  writers  as  Euphuistic  is  to  obscure  the  signi- 
ficance of  words.  The  last  of  the  travelers  to  write  within 
the  lifetime  of  Shakespeare  was  George  Sandys,  paraphraser 
in  verse  of  parts  of  the  Bible  and  translator  of  Ovid  at  a  later 
time  when  he  was  secretary  to  the  governor  of  the  colony  of 
Virginia.  Sandys'  Relation  of  a  "Journey  begun  A.  D.  1610 
was  published  in  1615  and  is  the  clear  and  unaffected  narrative 
of  a  man  of  breeding  who  traveled  neither  in  the  adventurous 
spirit  of  Coryate  nor  as  the  vagabond  that  Lithgow  was  com- 
pelled to  become.     Sandys  enjoyed  peculiar  advantages  while 


304     PROSE  OF  CONTEMPORARY  COMMENT 

in  Jerusalem,  seeing  many  things  denied  to  other  travelers, 
among  them  "the  dwelling  of  Zebedee,  the  sycamore  on  which 
Judas  hanged  himself,  the  'Castle  of  Lazarus,'  and  the  vault 
from  which  he  was  raised, the  house  of  Simon  the  Leper,  the 
fount  where  Bathsheba  bathed  her  feet,  the  palace  of  Pilate, 
and  the  convent  to  which  the  Magdalen  retired  from  the  van- 
ities of  the  world.  With  the  tomb  of  Juliet  still  on  view  at 
Verona  and  the  many  curiosities  of  "Shakespeare" — to  men- 
tion none  other  —  to  be  seen  at  Stratford  and  elsewhere,  let 
no  one  cast  a  stone  at  the  credulity  of  either  Sandys  or  other 
of  these  Elizabethan  "sight-seers." 

Two  examples  of  the  prose  of  contemporary  comment, 
very  diverse  in  their  natures,  have  been  reserved  for  a  some- 
what fuller  treatment.  These  are  Greville's  Life  of  Sidney 
and  Jonson's  Timber  or  Discoveries.  Both  were  posthumous 
publications,  and  both  these  men  have  already  been  considered 
elsewhere  and  in  other  connections.  Sir  Fulke  Greville,  who 
received  from  James  at  his  coronation  Warwick  Castle  and 
was  years  afterwards  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Lord  Brooke,  is 
best  remembered  as  the  early  friend  of  Sidney  and  the  one 
among  the  "favorites"  of  Queen  Elizabeth  who  (doubtless 
due  to  his  own  prudence)  suffered  least  from  the  royal  changes 
of"teniper.  Greville's  literary  repute  is  at  least  three-fold; 
for  his  lyrics  of  intellectualized  emotion,  for  his  singularly 
difficult  Senecan  dramas,  and  for  his  poetical  treatises  on 
statecraft.  To  these  we  must  add  his  writings  in  prose, 
chiefly  represented  in  the  Life  of  Sidney  and  in  A  Letter  to  an 
LLonorahle  Lady.  The  latter  is  really  a  disquisition  in  the 
abstract  on  marriage  for  love.  It  was  never  sent,  nor  indeed 
addressed,  to  any  real  person;  but  is  deeply  interesting  and 
full  of  profundity  of  thought.  The  Life  of  Sidney  is  not  a  bi- 
ography at  all,  but  appears  to  have  been  intended  as  a  species 
of  autobiographical  preface  to  Greville's  collected  works,  illus- 
trating less  the  outward  happenings  of  his  life  than  his  relations 
to  the  two  beings  whom  he  most  loved  and  revered,  Sidney, 
the  friend  of  his  youth,  and  his  "incomparable  queen,"  Eliza- 
beth. In  the  course  of  a  narrative  that  wanders  whither  the 
author  will,   guided   by  associations   and   recollections   often 


GREVILLE'S  "LIFE  OF  SIDNEY"  305 

irrecoverable  to-day,  Greville  expresses  himself  on  many  sub- 
jects on  which  he  had  pondered  in  the  course  of  a  long  and  ac- 
tively useful  public  life.  His  reading  must  have  been  wide,  yet 
he  is  strangley  unaffected  either  by  the  erudition  or  the  liter- 
ature of  his  time.  A  more  completely  metaphysical  mind  than 
Greville's  it  would  be  difficult  to  discover.  He  was  a  Stoic 
in  an  age  of  Platonism,  a  theorist  in  statecraft  among  poli- 
ticians. He  is  full  of  Macchiavelian  subtlety  and  insight,  but 
stands  aloof  from  argument,  controversy,  and  all  practical 
applications.  Consciousness  of  the  gauds  and  ornaments  of 
rhetoric  as  such  he  knows  not  at  all;  and  yet  the  very  essence 
of  poetry  and  of  beauty  of  expression  is  his  at  times,  not  only  in 
his  verse  but  in  his  prose  as  well.  Fluency  is  the  quality  that 
is  furthest  from  the  thought  as  from  the  style  of  Greville. 
What  he  says,  he  says  with  gravity,  with  a  certain  hesitant 
difficulty;  and  he  abounds  in  indirections  of  speech  and  sen- 
tences in  which  we  wander  with  him  as  in  a  maze.  But  there 
is  certainly  (if  we  will  but  seek  it)  a  significance,  depth,  and 
beauty  in  the  thought  of  Greville  that  make  it  worth  the  labor 
of  attainment  and  that  come  to  exercise  on  him  who  learns 
to  know  him  a  peculiar  fascination.  The  comparison  which 
has  been  made  of  Greville  to  Polonius,  with  his  pedantic 
parade  of  shallow,  hackneyed  truisms,  and  his  incessant  bab- 
ling  to  no  purpose,  seems  peculiarly  unhappy.  King  James 
with  his  Basilikon  Doron  —  the  advice  of  Polonius  to  his  son 
written  in  large  and  in  all  seriousness  —  King  James  is  Polo- 
nius; not  Greville,  whose  lofty  preoccupation  with  abstract 
truth  and  search  therefor,  together  with  a  certain  aw^kwardness 
of  style,  despite  his  power  to  express  a  beautiful  thought  in  apt 
and  fitting  raiment,  seem  qualities  more  in  common  with  our 
American    Emerson. 

Ben  Jonson's  Timber  or  Discoveries  made  upon  Men  and 
Matter  was  gathered  with  other  material  at  the  end  of  the 
second  folio  of  the  poet's  collected  works,  1641.  The  book 
has  been  called  a  "species  of  commonplace  book  of  aphorisms 
flowing  out  of  the  poet's  daily  reading."  But  it  is  also  much 
more.  For  although  many  passages  are  all  but  literal  trans- 
lations, culled  from  the  classics  or  from  medieval  or  contem- 


3o6     PROSE  OF  CONTEMPORARY  COMMENT 

porary  Latin  and  other  authors,  every  note  is  stamped  with  the 
powerful  personahty  of  Jonson  and  penned  with  the  utmost 
care  as  to  details  of  expression  and  style.  Moreover,  other 
entries  are  not  literary  but  allusive  to  Jonson's  contemporaries 
or  expressions  of  his  estimate  of  them.  Such  are  the  famous 
passages  concerning  "Shakespeare  nostrati"  (our  country- 
man), as  Jonson  calls  him  in  pride,  and  the  one  on  Bacon  and 
his  eloquence.  Jonson  esteemed  both  men  and  noted  his 
regard  in  unaffected  terms.     Of  Bacon  his  words  are: 

My  conceit  of  his  person  was  never  increased  towards  him  by 
place  or  honors.  But  I  have  and  do  reverence  him  for  the  greatness 
that  was  only  proper  to  himself,  in  that  he  seemed  to  me  ever,  by  his 
work,  one  of  the  greatest  men,  and  most  worthy  of  admiration,  that 
had  been  in  many  ages. 

As  to  Shakespeare,  Jonson  draws  nearer  the  man  himself  in 
the  memorable  words:  "For  I  loved  the  man,  and  do  honor 
his  memory  on  this  side  idolatry  as  much  as  any." 
\j  Religious  and  devotional  writings  form  a  very  considerable 
proportion  of  the  total  output  of  the  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean 
press.  Apart  from  the  revision  and  innumerable  editions  of 
the  Bible  and  the  various  adaptations,  translations,  and  para- 
phrases into  which  it  was  wrought  in  parts  by  the  devout,  apart 
too,  from  the  English  Prayer  Book  and  other  manuals  and 
rituals  of  devotion,  the  mass  of  controversial  "literature" 
which  was  begotten  first  of  the  break  with  Rome,  and  secondly 
by  the  schism  that  arrayed  Anglican  and  Puritan  in  two  hostile 
camps,  was  legion,  even  if  now  as  dead  as  the  herd  of  swine, 
possessed  of  devils,  that  cast  themselves  into  the  sea  at  Gad- 
arene.  Divinity,  employing  literary  art,  as  it  must  only  for 
an  ulterior  purpose,  is  all  but  wholly  of  the  literature  of  knowl- 
edge, however  it  may  wing  its  words  with  poetry  or  glow  with 
the  passion  of  faith.  Moreover,  theological  writing  more 
completely  than  any  other  form  of  prose  is  contemporary  in 
its  purpose  and  tethered  to  the  conditions  of  the  moment. 
For  even  when  the  religious  principles  involved  are  of  the 
widest  significance  and  application,  the  theology  of  one  age 
needs  commonly  to  be  translated  in  terms  of  the  next,  and 


WORKS  OF  RELIGIOUS  CONTROVERSY    307 

issues  that  have  once  seemed  momentous,  creeds  for  which 
men  laid  down  their  lives,  are  no  more  to  generations  that 
come  after  than  remote,  jagged  rocks  that  break  the  monotony 
of  a  level  horizon. 

The  battle  royal  of  new  and  militant  English  Protestantism 
against  the  Church  of  Rome  in  matters  ceremonial  and  dog- 
matic had  been  fought  out  mostly  by  those  who  survived,  if 
at  all,  not  far  into  the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  Sir  Thomas  More 
and  Erasmus  were  agreed  with  the  reformers  as  to  the  existence 
of  abuses  within  the  church;  but  the  controversy  of  the  former 
with  Tyndale  pivoted  on  the  question,  could  the  church  be 
reformed  from  within  and  survive.  It  is  better  to  think  of 
Tyndale  as  the  first  of  the  devoted  scholars  that  gave  their  time 
to  the  translation  of  our  English  Bible  than  to  recall  in  him  the 
bitter  controversialist,  attacking  The  Practices  of  Prelates. 
And  it  is  better  to  remember  Cranmer,  first  Protestant  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  as  the  artistic  form-giver  to  the  beautiful 
diction  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  than  for  his  voluminous 
and  now  forgotten  writings  on  the  eucharistic  and  other  con- 
troversies that  shook  the  theological  structures  of  the  time. 

We  may  pass  over  the  intervening  decades  of  minor  con- 
troversy in  which  figured  the  once  potent  names  of  Whitgift, 
Rainolds,  Featley,  Andrews,  and  Field.  Towards  the  close 
of  Elizabeth's  reign  the  religious  equilibrium  which  she 
had  so  long  contrived  to  maintain  was  rendered  unstable, 
first  by  the  activities  of  the  Jesuits  in  their  endeavors  to  win 
back  England  to  the  faith  of  Rome;  and  secondly,  by  the  mil- 
itant attitude  of  Puritanism.  Among  the  many  Roman  Cath- 
olics of  English  birth  who  took  their  part  in  the  pamphlet  war- 
fare of  the  time  may  be  named  Thomas  Stapleton,  prominent 
during  the  nineties  in  the  counsels  of  the  English  college,  founded 
by  the  Jesuits  at  Douay,  and  the  author,  amongst  much  else, 
of  a  History  of  the  English  Church  and  an  A pology  for  Philip 
II  as  against  Elizabeth.  A  more  notable  man  in  the  England 
of  his  time  was  Robert  Parsons,  who  came  back  to  his  native 
countr)',  about  1580,  an  accredited  missionary  from  the  Vatican 
to  carry  on  innumerable  intrigues  and  to  write  innumerable 
pamphlets  in  the  cause  of  his  church.      His  little  volume  of 


3o8     PROSE  OF  CONTEMPORARY  COMMENT 

Christian  exercises,  entitled  A  Christian  Directory,  enjoyed 
an  extraordinary  vogue.  Among  many,  perhaps  the  most 
conspicuous  reply  to  the  Roman  Catholic  position  in  later 
Elizabethan  years  was  John  Rainolds'  De  Romance  Ecclesice 
Idolatria,    1 596. 

Although  the  attack  on  Rome  and  Romish  "practices" 
continued  almost  unabated,  long  before  the  time  when  such 
men  as  Rainolds  began  to  write,  Puritanism  had  arisen  and 
with  it  new  issues  and  contentions.  The  Renaissance  had 
stood  for  individualism,  and  individualism  fostered  the  ideals 
of  nationality;  the  Protestant  idea  went  further  to  give  to  each 
people  its  national  church.  But  it  was  felt  that  the  world  had 
lost  something  in  thus  sacrificing  the  ambitious  ideal  of  Rome: 
a  world  united  in  a  universally  accepted  faith,  under  one  su- 
preme and  apostolic  head,  who  stood  in  spiritual  power  above 
princes  as  princes  stood  temporarily  above  common  men.  It 
was  at  this  juncture  that  John  Calvin  conceived  his  ingenious 
plan  of  a  Christian  republic  which  a  happy  train  of  circum- 
stances enabled  him  to  put  into  practice  with  triumphant  suc- 
cess at  Geneva.  Calvin's  reorganization  of  the  church  in  re- 
lation to  the  state  found  its  basis  in  the  Christian  man  "elected 
and  called  of  God,  preserved  by  his  grace  from  the  power  of 
sin,  predestinate  to  eternal  life."  "Every  such  Christian  man 
is  in  himself  a  priest,  and  every  group  of  such  men  is  a  church, 
self-governing,  independent  of  all  save  God,  supreme  in  its 
authority  over  all  matters  ecclesiastical  and  spiritual."  With- 
out entering  into  the  details  of  Calvin's  nice  balance  of  power, 
by  which  administration,  election,  interpretaion  of  Scripture, 
decision  of  doctrine,  discipline,  and  even  excommunication, 
all  are  provided  for  within  the  congregation,  it  is  sufficient  to 
note  this  most  important  corollary:  "To  this  discipline  princes 
as  well  as  common  men  are  alike  subject;  princes  as  well  as 
common  men  must  take  their  doctrine  from  the  ministers  of 
the  church."  Calvin  was  at  one  with  the  Church  of  Rome 
in  thus  setting  up  a  spiritual  and  ecclesiastical  supremacy  over 
all  political  and  national  claims.  But  "the  Pope  of  Geneva" 
was  not  the  same  as  the  Pope  of  Rome.  On  the  other  hand, 
Calvin  was  at  variance  with  the  political  and  social  systems  of 


RICHARD   HOOKER  309 

every  nation  of  Europe  in  placing  the  ultimate  source  of  power 
neither  in  prince,  parliament,  nor  people,  but  in  the  individual 
Christian  man;  for,  however  despotic  might  seem  the  Calvin- 
istic  idea  of  the  authority  of  pastor  and  elder,  both  alike  were 
subject,  in  the  last  resort,  to  the  vote  of  the  congregation.  How 
deeply  the  "exiles"  from  England  drank  of  the  Calvinistic 
font  must  be  clear  to  the  most  careless  reader  of  history.  The 
new  Puritan  idea  was  alike  counter  to  the  ideals  of  a  national 
and  established  church  and  to  any  monarchical  form  of  govern- 
ment. That  this  idea  should  ultimately  have  led  to  armed 
conflict  with  both  church  and  state  was  in  the  very  nature  of 
things.  But  with  these  larger  issues  we  are  not  here  concerned. 
One  service  Calvinism  assuredly  rendered  mankind  in  its 
recognition  of  the  individual  man  and  his  place  as  a  political 
and  social  unit  at  the  basis  of  modern  democracy.  "' 

It  was  these  essential  doctrines  of  Puritanism,  with  the 
innumerable  other  points  in  which  the  Calvinistic  interpreta- 
tion of  Christianity  fell  into  variance  with  the  tenets  of  the 
Church  of  Eng^land,  that  Richard  Hooker  set  himself  to 
refute  in  The  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  four  books  of  which 
appeared  in  1594,  the  other  three  posthumously  in  1648  and 
1662.  The  literary  attacks  of  Martin  Marprelate  on  the 
bishops  and  on  what,  from  the  Puritan  point  of  view,  was 
regarded  as  a  usurpation  of  power,  preceded  Hooker;  and  they 
have  already  received  attention  above  in  our  consideration 
of  the  popular  pamphlet  literature.  Hooker  substituted, 
in  this  warfare  between  the  opposing  forces  of  Puritan  and 
Anglican,  coolness  and  circumspection  for  passion  and  abuse, 
a  consideration  of  the  question  on  the  basis  of  principle  and 
general  law  for  personality,  recrimination,  and  scurrility,  and 
in  so  doing  definitively  stated  the  position  of  the  Church  of 
England  at  the  end  of  Elizabeth's  reign. 

Richard  Hooker  was  humbly  born  at  Heavitree,  near 
Exeter,  in  1554.  He  was  from  the  first  a  student  of  extraor- 
dinary precocity  and  industry;  and,  attracting  the  attention 
of  Jewell,  Bishop  of  Salisbury,  went  up  to  Oxford  where,  as 
one  of  the  fellows  of  Corpus  Christi  College,  he  gained  an 
unusual    repute    for   his    learning   and    piety.     Hooker   took 


310     PROSE  OF  CONTEMPORARY  COMMENT 

orders  in  1581;  and  four  years  after  was  appointed,  through 
the  influence  of  Archbishop  Whitgift,  Master  of  the  Temple. 
It  was  here  that  Hooker,  much  against  his  will,  was  drawn 
into  a  theological  controversy  with  Walter  Travers,  who  was 
afternoon  lecturer  in  the  Temple,  and  who  maintained  Pres- 
byterian views  concerning  church  government  with  great  ardor. 
As  Fuller  put  it,  the  pulpit  of  the  Temple  "spake  pure  Canter- 
bury in  the  morning  and  Geneva  in  the  afternoon, "  —  a  condi- 
tion of  affairs  that  soon  became  intolerable.  Hereupon  the 
archbishop  intervened  and,  on  a  technicality,  forbade  Travers 
to  preach,  a  move  that  helped  neither  the  bishops'  cause  nor 
improved  the  temper  of  Travers,who  continued  the  controversy 
(now  become  hopelessly  personal)  in  print.  Hooker  replied, 
defending  himself  especially  against  the  charge  of  latitudi- 
narianism.  But  he  was  heartily  sick  of  controversy  and  be- 
sought his  patron  to  remove  him  from  the  Temple  to  a  quiet 
retreat  in  the  country.  This  he  at  length  found  in  the  living 
of  Boscombe,  near  Salisbury,  and  it  was  there  that,  pondering 
in  peace  on  the  questions  so  raised  in  the  heat  of  controversy. 
Hooker  projected  and  wrote  his  life-work.  The  Laws  of  Eccle- 
siastical Polity.  In  1595  Hooker  was  translated  to  the  better 
living  of  Bishopsbourne  in  the  neighborhood  of  Canterbury, 
where  he  died  towards  the  close  of  the  year  1600. 

In  person  Hooker  has  been  described  by  Walton  as  mean 
in  stature,  insignificant  in  appearance  and  address,  and 
conducting  himself  at  all  times  "so  as  to  give  no  occasion  of 
evil,  but  ...  in  much  patience  in  afflictions,  in  an- 
guishes, in  necessities,  in  poverty  and  no  doubt  in  long  suffering; 
yet  troubling  no  man  with  his  discontents  and  wants. "  While 
it  has  been  suspected  that  Walton,  like  the  true  literary  artist 
that  he  was,  overrated  the  insignificance  of  the  personality  of 
Hooker  that  he  might  heighten  the  contrast  with  his  brilliancy 
of  mind  and  argumentative  power,  it  is  certain  that  Hooker 
was  a  man  of  impoverished  vitality,  shrinking  from  an  active 
contact  with  life,  and  singularly  dependent  on  the  good  offices 
of  others  —  which  seem  to  have  been  offered  him  unsought 
—  in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life.  According  to  the  often 
related  story  of  Walton,  on  the  suggestion  made  by  a  kindly- 


"ECCLESIASTICAL  POLITY"  311 

disposed  matron  that  he  needed  a  wife,  Hooker  commissioned 
her  to  find  him  one.  And  the  matron  provided  for  him  "her 
daughter  Joan,  who  brought  him  neither  beauty  nor  portion; 
for  her  conditions,"  continues  Walton,  "they  were  too  hke 
that  wife's  which  is  by  Solomon  compared  to  a  dripping  house; 
so  that  the  good  man  had  no  reason  to  rejoice  in  the  wife 
of  his  youth. "  Walton  completes  his  picture  with  a  descrip- 
tion of  a  visit  paid  Hooker  by  two  of  his  pupils.  They  found 
him  "with  a  book  in  his  hand"  tending  "his  small  allotment 
of  sheep  in  a  common  field;  which  he  told  his  pupils  he  was 
forced  to  do  then,  for  that  his  servant  was  gone  home  to  dine 
and  assist  his  wife  to  do  some  necessary  household  duties. 
But  when  his  servant  returned  and  released  him,  then  his 
two  pupils  attended  him  unto  his  house,  where  their  best 
entertainment  was  his  quiet  company  which  was  presently 
denied  them;  for  Richard  was  called  to  rock  the  cradle." 

The  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity  comprehends  an  exhaus- 
tive explanation  and  justification  of  the  theological  position 
of  the  Church  of  England,  between  the  Puritan  who  claimed 
the  Bible  for  his  sole  and  exclusive  authority,  and  the  Roman 
Catholic  to  whom  the  authority  of  the  church  stood  above 
all.  In  the  first  book  Hooker  endeavored  to  explain  the 
philosophical  position  of  the  Church  of  England  and  to  make 
clear  its  place  as  an  institution  in  the  universal  scheme.  The 
second  book  takes  issue  with  the  Puritan  assumption  that  the 
Bible  contains  all  the  law  and  all  guidance  in  things  spiritual 
and  temporal  that  can  be  needed  by  the  Christian  man;  while 
the  third  denies  the  Calvinistic  assumption  that  a  form  of 
church  government  is  prescribed  in  the  Scriptures  or  is  even 
discoverable  in  them.  The  fourth  book  contests  the  charge 
that  the  ceremonies  of  the  Church  of  England  are  in  any 
wise  popish;  and  the  fifth  is  concerned  with  an  exhaustive 
vindication  of  that  church  as  to  the  minuter  attacks  of  the 
Puritans.  In  the  sixth  book  Hooker  turns  from  defense  to 
attack  the  Presbyterian  system  of  church  government;  the 
seventh  correspondingly  attempts  a  vindication  of  Episcopacy; 
while  the  last  explains  and  defends  the  doctrine  of  royal 
supremacy  in  the  church. 


312     PROSE  OF  CONTEMPORARY  COMMENT 

Whatever  Hooker's  suggested  debts  to  the  theological 
system  of  the  Spanish  theologian,  Suarez,  or  to  Thomas 
Aquinas,  for  comprehensiveness  of  design  and  admirable 
quality  of  detail  the  Ecclesiastical  Polity  must  be  pronounced 
a  work  deserving  the  highest  praise.  Despite  much  dialectic 
skill  and  an  unquestionable  integrity  of  purpose,  it  can  not 
be  said  that  Hooker  is  either  a  clear  or  an  accurate  reasoner. 
His  fairness  of  attitude  and  moderation  of  spirit,  how^ever, 
make  him  peculiarly  the  man  to  have  set  forth  the  position  of 
the  church  of  compromise.  Hooker  is  above  all  things  schol- 
arly and  literary,  but  singularly  free,  with  all  his  learning, 
from  the  slightest  trace  of  pedantry  and  the  scholar's  darling 
sin  in  his  age,  the  overplus  of  quotation.  Hooker's  style,  too, 
is  devoid  of  literary  affectations  or  the  slightest  strife  after 
rhetorical  effect;  and  yet  he  is  again  and  again  effectively 
eloquent  where  the  current  of  his  argument  hurries  him  into 
the  rapids  of  similitude.  Attention  has  been  called  to  the 
purely  bookish  nature  of  Hooker's  figures  and  illustrations. 
It  may  be  doubted  if  a  figure  drawn  from  nature  or  a  personal 
observation  of  man  can  be  found  from  cover  to  cover  of  the 
Ecclesiastical  Polity,  as  it  may  be  doubted  if  this  meek  and 
shrinking  scholar  ever  made  an  independent  observation  on 
the  visible  things  of  this  world  in  his  life.  And  yet  there  is 
something  estimable  about  both  the  man  and  his  work.  We 
do  not,  it  is  true,  return  to  The  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polity 
—  unless  we  be  churchmen  —  with  the  pleasure  which 
attracts  us  to  the  witching  phrase  and  sly  humor  of  Hooker's 
biographer,  worthy  Isaak  Walton;  but  we  feel  that  Hooker 
has  written  a  surprisingly  permanent  book  when  we  consider 
his  theme,  and  one  alike  an  honor  to  his  wide  theological 
learning,  his  integrity  of  mind,  and  his  power  to  compel 
language  into  the  artistic  mold  of  thought.  Hooker  is  one 
of  the  great  English  prose  stylists,  fortunate  that  in  his  lifetime 
his  vine-like  nature,  that  needed  always  the  prop  of  patronage 
to  sustain  it,  was  so  sustained  as  to  produce  a  great  book. 
Hooker  has  been  even  more  fortunate  posthumously,  as  few 
authors  have  been  more  constantly  and  consistently  over- 
praised.    The  familiar  grouping  of  his  name  with  Spenser's, 


"ECCLESIASTICAL  POLITY"  313 

Shakespeare's,  and  Bacon's  is  preposterous,  because  Hooker's 
talents  are  reconstructive  and,  in  no  primary  sense,  creative; 
and  because  the  field  which  he  tilled  so  fruitfully  was,  after 
all,  but  a  little  plot  of  ground. 

It  is  difficult  to  quote  from  a  work  such  as  Hooker's; 
but  perhaps  this  passage  will  disclose,  as  well  as  an  extract  can, 
the  unaffectedness  of  his  diction,  its  impersonality  and  effective 
rhetoric. 

The  bounds  of  wisdom  are  large,  and  within  them  much  is  con- 
tained. Wisdom  was  Adam's  instructor  in  Paradise;  wisdom  endued 
the  fathers,  who  lived  before  the  law,  with  the  knowledge  of  holy 
things;  by  the  wisdom  of  the  law  of  God,  David  attained  to  excel 
others  in  understanding;  and  Solomon  likewise  to  excel  David  by  the 
selfsame  wisdom  of  God  —  teaching  him  many  things  besides  the 
law.  The  ways  of  well-doing  are,  in  number,  even  as  many  as  are 
the  kinds  of  voluntary  actions,  so  that  whatsoever  we  do  in  this 
world  and  may  do  it  ill,  we  show  ourselves  therein  by  well-doing  to 
be  wise.  Now,  if  wisdom  did  teach  men  by  Scripture  not  only  all  the 
ways  that  are  right  and  good  in  some  certain  kind,  according  to  that 
of  St.  Paul  concerning  the  use  of  Scripture,  but  did  simply,  without 
any  manner  of  exception,  restraint,  or  distinction,  teach  every  way 
of  doing  well,  there  is  no  art  but  Scripture  should  teach  it,  because 
every  art  doth  teach  the  way  how  to  do  something  or  other  well.  To 
teach  men  therefore  wisdom  professeth,  and  to  teach  them  every 
good  way,  but  not  every  good  way  by  one  way  of  teaching.  What- 
soever either  man  on  earth  or  the  angels  of  heaven  do  know,  it  is  as 
a  drop  of  that  unemptiable  fountain  of  wisdom;  which  wid2)m  hath 
diversely  imparted  her  treasures  unto  the  world.  As  her  ways  are 
of  sundry  kinds,  so  her  manner  of  teaching  is  not  merely  one  and  the 
same.  Some  things  she  openeth  by  the  sacred  books  of  Scripture, 
some  things  by  the  glorious  works  of  nature;  with  some  things  she 
inspireth  them  from  above  by  spiritual  influence,  in  some  things  she 
leadeth  and  traineth  them  only  by  worldly  experience  and  practice. 
We  may  not  so  in  any  one  special  kind  admire  her,  that  we  disgrace 
her  in  any  other,  but  let  all  her  ways  be  according  unto  their  place 
and  degree  adored. 

Vastly  in  contrast  with  a  style  such  as  this  is  the  personal 
note,  with  which  the  following  passage  from  one  of  Donne's 


314     PROSE  OF  CONTEMPORARY  COMMENT 

sermons   opens,   and   the   vivid   and  ingenious  imagery  that 
succeeds : 

If  I  should  inquire  upon  what  occasion  God  elected  me,  and  wrjt 
my  name  in  the  book  of  life,  I  should  sooner  be  afraid  that  it  were 
not  so,  than  find  a  reason  why  it  should  be  so.  God  made  sun  and 
moon  to  distinguish  seasons,  and  day  and  night,  and  we  cannot  have 
the  fruits  of  the  earth  but  in  their  seasons;  but  God  hath  made  no 
decree  to  distinguish  the  seasons  of  his  mercies;  in  Paradise,  the  fruits 
were  ripe  the  first  minute,  and  in  heaven  it  is  always  autumn,  his 
mercies  are  ever  in  their  maturity.  We  ask  our  daily  bread,  and  God 
never  says  you  should  have  come  yesterday.  He  never  says  you  must 
come  again  to-morrow,  but  to-day  if  ye  will  hear  his  voice,  to-day  he 
will  hear  you.  If  some  king  of  the  earth  have  so  large  an  extent  of 
dominion  in  north  and  south,  as  that  he  hath  winter  and  summer 
together  in  his  dominions,  so  large  an  extent  east  and  west  as  that  he 
hath  day  and  night  together  in  his  dominions,  much  more  hath  God 
mercy  and  judgment  together;  he  brought  light  out  of  darkness,  not 
out  of  a  lesser  light;  he  can  bring  thy  summer  out  of  winter,  though 
thou  have  no  spring;  though  in  the  ways  of  fortune,  or  understanding, 
or  conscience,  thou  have  been  benighted  till  now,  wintered  and  frozen, 
clouded  and  eclipsed,  damped  and  benumbed,  smothered  and  stupi- 
fied  till  now,  now  God  comes  to  thee,  not  as  the  dawning  of  the  day, 
not  as  in  the  bud  of  the  spring,  but  as  the  sun  at  noon,  to  illustrate 
all  shadows, as  the  sheaves  in  harvest, to  fill  all  penuries:  all  occasions 
invite  his  mercies,  and  all  times  are  his  seasons. 

Donne,  the  man  and  the  poet,  will  claim  us  in  a  chapter 
to  come.  He  had  been  much  engaged  in  theological  studies 
and  writing  before  he  took  orders  in  1615.  As  reader  in 
divinity  at  Lincoln's  Inn  up  to  1619,  and  as  Dean  of  St.  Paul's 
between  1621  and  ten  years  later,  Donne  became  a  famous 
preacher  and  nearly  two  hundred  sermons,  some  of  them  more 
like  treatises  for  their  length  and  elaboration,  attest  his  zeal, 
his  extensive  learning  and  eloquence  in  this  field  of  his  final 
choice.  The  originality,  the_^5iibtlety,  intellectuality,  and 
fanciful  witoFthe  poet  Dbrine,  all  are  present  in  these  FemarTc- 
able  discourses,  tfansHgaTe<l"by  the  steady  light  of  a  passionate 
religious  conviction  such  as  only  those  who  have  once  travailed 
in  the  ways  of  the  world  can  truly  feel.  But  the  Sermons  of 
Donne,  like  the  voluminous  Contemplations  of  Hall  (begun 


MINOR  THEOLOGIANS  AND  PULPITERS    315 

in  16 1 2),  fall  for  the  most  part  beyond  our  period,  and  find 
mention  here  only  because  they  complete  our  story  of  the 
literary  careers  of  two  of  Shakespeare's  notable  contemporaries. 
Hall,  to  receive  attention  in  the  next  chapter,  is  better  remem- 
bered in  the  history  of  literature  for  his  claim  to  be  "the  first 
English  satirist"  than  as  the  Bishop  of  Norwich,  with  whom 
Milton  disdained  not  to  measure  controversial  swords.  Among 
other  famous  pulpiters,  Henry  Smith  was  described  in  his 
time  as  "silver-tongued  Smith";  Daniel  Featley  was  valiant 
especially  against  Anabaptists;  and  eloquent  Lancelot  Andrews, 
active  among  the  translators  of  the  Authorized  Version  of  the 
Bible,  defended  his  sovereign,  King  James,  when  the  latter 
was  fallen  in  controversial  battle  under  the  spear  of  the  re- 
doubtable Cardinal  Bellarmine.  Richard  Sibbes,  too,  was 
lauded  for  his  pulpit  oratory  in  King  James'  time;  and 
Thomas  Adams  was  dubbed  by  no  less  an  authority  than 
Southey  "the  prose  Shakespeare  of  Puritan  theologians," 
whatever  these  words  may  convey  to  those  who  can  understand. 
Of  all  these  notable  pulpiters,  with  their  sermons,  their  med- 
itations, works  of  edification,  and  manuals  of  devotion,  the 
outer  fringe  of  a  great  literature,  and  as  such  the  soonest 
dispensed  with  —  it  is  enough  to  have  mentioned  each  with 
honor  in  his  place. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

ELIZABETHAN  SATIRE,  THE  EPIGRAM  AND  THE 
"CHARACTER" 

O  ATIRE  is  alike  a  mode  and  a  form.  As  a  mode  it  is 
^  constant  to  practically  all  literature,  verse,  drama,  prose 
fiction,  and  the  essay.  So  considered  there  is  among  the 
Elizabethans  one  superlative  satirist,  and  that  is  Ben  Jonson 
of  whose  dramatic  satires  —  chief  among  them  Every  Man 
Out  of  his  Humor,  Cynthia's  Revels,  and  Poetaster  —  an 
account  has  already  been  given  above.  Formal  satire,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  a  different  thing.  It  came  comparatively  late 
in  English  as  into  other  literatures.  It  is  derived,  in  all  the 
literatures  of  modern  Western  Europe,  direct  from  the  Romans 
and  is  one  of  the  most  self-conscious,  as  it  is  one  of  the  most 
easily  distinguishable,  of  literary  forms.  Although  the  satire 
of  any  given  age  must  commonly  be  read  with  notes  in  thelText, 
as  the  conditions  on  which  its  allusions  are  founded  have 
lapsed  into  a  half-forgotten  past,  its,  elements  are  remarkably 
constant  and  its^  subject-matter  changes  very  little  from  age  to 
age.  "Satire,"  according  to  Heinsius  (quoted  by  Dryden 
in  his  Dissertation  on  Horace),  "is  a  kind  of  poetry,  without 
a  series  of  action,  invented  for  the  purging  of  our  minds;  in 
which  human  vices,  ignorance,  and  errors,  and  all  things 
besides,  which  are  produced  from  them  in  every  man,  are 
severely  reprehended;  partly  dramatically,  partly  simply,  and 
sometimes  in  both  kinds  of  speaking;  but,  for  the  most  part, 
figuratively,  and  occultly;  consisting  in  a  low  familiar  way, 
chiefly  in  a  sharp  and  pungent  manner  of  speech;  but  partly 
also,  in  a  facetious  and  civil  way  of  jesting;  by  wjjlch  either 
hatred,  or  laughter,  or  indignation  is  moved." 

It  was  in  the  nature  of  things  that  so  self-conscious  a 
literary  form  as  satire  should  flourish  for  the  first  time  in  the 
first  literary  epoch  of  England  which  had  learned  to  know 


SATIRE  OF  MEDIEVAL  TYPE  317 

itself  and  criticize  its  surroundings.  Such  an  age  was  that  of 
Elizabeth  which,  with  all  its  love  of  novel  and  romantic  ideas, 
had  none  the  less  within  it  that  conservative  force  of  reaction 
which  we  have  already  seen  exerted  to  the  full  in  the  ideals  and 
practices  of  Jonson. 

Older  English  satire  was  altogether  informal;  its  source 
was  not  Horace  or  Juvenal,  but  contemporary  life.  It  was 
likely  to  take  either  the  form  of  burlesque  or  invective  and 
was  often  political  as  well  as  social  in  its  aim.  The  details  of 
the  satire  of  earlier  Tudor  times  do  not  concern  us  here; 
suffice  it  to  say  that  Barclay's  celebrated  Ship  of  Fools,  Eras- 
mus' Praise  of  Folly,  and  the  vigorous  satires  of  the  redoubt- 
able Skelton,  though  all  show  acquaintance  with  classical 
satirists,  are  of  irregular  medieval  type,  though  freed  in  a 
measure  from  that  leisurely  and  incessant  allegorical  quality 
which  makes  medieval  satire  so  insupportable  to  the  modern 
reader. 

But  three  Roman  satirists  survived  the  wreck  of  time. 
These  were  Horace,  Persius,  and  Juvenal;  and  all  were  known, 
at  least  in  part,  while  Juvenal  was  dear  to  the  medieval  under- 
standing. All  three  were  printed  among  the  earliest  printed 
books.  The  Satires  of  Horace  were  translated  by  Thomas 
Drant,  an  experimenter  in  classical  meters  for  English,  as  early 
as  1566;  but  Persius  was  Englished  by  Holyday  only  in  the 
year  of  Shakespeare's  death,  and  Juvenal  not  until  much  later. 
The  eighteen  satires  of  Horace  and  the  twenty  odd  epistles 
which  are  very  much  like  them,  are  the  humorous  narratives 
of  personal  experiences,  with  witty  comment  and  reflections! 
upon  them  of  a  kindly  natured  rnan  of  the  world.  Horace 
says.  "Come  let  us  laugh  together  at  the  follies  of  men;  our- 
selves included."  The  sixteen  satires  of  Juvenal,  on  the  other 
hand,  with  which  may  be  included  the  six  of  Persius,  difi'er  in 
pursuing  the  method  of  direct  rebuke.  They  are  the  deeper 
and  severi^thoughts  of  the  moralist  and  the  philosopher,  and 
they  are  as  pessimistic  in  tone  as  they  are  bitter  and  ironical 
of  speech.  These  were  the  men  whom  the  Elizabethan  writers 
of  regular  satire  set  themselves  to  imitate.  But  a  curious 
error  in  the  origin  of  the  word,  or  confusion  at  the  least,  had 


3i8  ELIZABETHAN  SATIRE 

much  to  do  with  affecting  their  practice  of  this  art  of  the  an- 
cients. As  all  know,  the  Latin  word  satura  signified  a  mixture 
of  fruits,  as  Dryden  translated  it,  a  hotchpotch.  Most  of  the 
Elizabethans  thought  of  a  satire  as  a  "satyrus,"  a  "mixed 
kind  of  animal  who  was  imagined  to  bring  the  rude  observa- 
tions of  his  simple  life  to  bear  upon  the  faults  of  humanity." 
Even  Every  Man  out  of  his  Humor  was  registered  in  1600  as 
"a  comical  satyre."  Nor  were  the  satires  written  in  Italy  and 
France  in  imitation  of  the  Roman  satirists  —  the  satires  of 
Ariosto,  of  Alamanni,  of  Fresnayne,  and  Regnier  —  unknown 
to  the  writers  of  England,  although  it  may  be  suspected  that 
contemporary  foreign  authors  exercised  less  influence  in  satire 
than  in  some  other  forms  of  literature. 

Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  is,  as  Warton  called  him,  "the  first 

polished  English  satirist,"  and  his  three  poems  of  this  type  — 

which   however  he   did   not  call   satires  —  are   taken   almost 

direct  from  Horace  not  without  traces  of  an  acquaintance  with 

the  other  Roman  satirists  and  more  especially  with  the  Italian 

Alamanni.     At  the  same  time  they  deserve  much  praise  for 

their  English  quality  in  detail,  for  their  poetic  and  ideal  spirit, 

and  for  the  humane  character  of  their  reflective  mood  which 

was   caught   from   Horace    and   perhaps   was   never   so  well 

repeated  by  any  subsequent  English  satirist.     Wyatt's  meter 

is  the  terza  rima  of  Italy.     In  the   same   meter  is   Surrey's 

"Satire  against  the  Citizens  af  London,''  a  serious  moral  poem 

in  no  sense  a  true  satire.     It  has  been  remarked,  as  to  this 

/subject,  that  "there  is  an  interesting  contrast  between  Wyatt 

I  and  Surrey  —  the  former  borrowing  the  spirit  [of  satire  from 

I  Italy]  without  the  name,  and  the  latter  the  name  without  the 

'   spirit." 

The  earliest  Elizabethan  satirist  is  Edward  Hake,  a  lawyer 
and  protege  of  the  Earl  of  Leicester,  whose  News  out  of 
Paul's  Churchyard  was  registered  in  1568.  Hake  is  a  follower 
of  old  English  satire  and  is  little  affected  either  by  classical 
example  or  classical  urbanity.  His  outlook  on  life  is  pessi- 
mistic and  his  picture  of  his  "sottish  sinful  brittle  age,"  as  he 
terms  it,  while  full  of  observation,  is  neither  of  any  unusual 
merit  nor  very  original.     The   most  important  of  the  early 


THE  SATIRES  OF  DONNE  319 

satirists  is  George  Gascoigne,  whose  Steel  Glass  long  enjoyed 
a  deserved  popularity.  This  earnest  moral  poem  has  the 
distmctTon  of  being  one  of  the  earliest  non-dramatic  poems  of 
any  length  to  be  written  in  English  blank  verse.  It  was  printed 
in  1576  and  is  based  on  the  conception  that  most  human  wrongs 
are  due  to  the  defective,  if  beautiful,  visions  reflected  by 
flattery  in  glasses  of  crystal  or  beryl,  while  the  poet  in  contrast 
holds  up  the  true  mirror  of  burnished  steel  to  the  common- 
wealth, reflecting  therein  all  manner  of  men  in  their  just  pro- 
portions. The  Steel  Glass,  though  eloquent,  is  scarcely  more 
a  satire  in  the  classical  sense  than  Spenser's  Mother  Hubberd's 
Tale,  printed  in  1591  but  written  far  earlier,  in  which  is  related 
the  prosperous  adventures  of  two  scoundrels,  the  fox  and  the 
ape,  in  a  manner  suggestive  of  Chaucer  and  its  probable 
original,  the  fable  of  Reynard  the  Fox.  It  is  of  interest  to  note 
that  Mother  Hubberd's  Tale  is  the  first  satirical  poem  to 
appear  in  the  familiar  decasyllabic  rimed  couplet.  Nor  is 
the  regularity  with  which  Spenser  here  practised  that  popular 
measure  less  worthy  of  note. 

The  life  of  that  interesting  man  and  genuine  poet,  John 
Donne,  must  be  deferred  for  the  present,  as  he  is  here  to  claim 
our  attention  merely  as  a  satirist  in  regular  form.  To  Donne 
the  penning  of  his  six  or  seven  satires  was  as  incidental  to  a 
career  of  celebrity  in  prose,  poetry,  and  divintiy  as  was  the 
writing  of  Venus  and  Adonis  to  Shakespeare.  Donne's 
Satires,  like  most  of  his  other  verse,  saw  print  only  after  his 
death,  five  appearing  in  1633,  a  sixth  in  1635,  the  seventh,  the 
authenticity  of  which  has  been  not  unreasonably  questioned, 
not  until  1669.  The  actual  date  of  their  writing  is  difficult  to 
ascertain;  but  there  seems  much  reason  to  believe  several 
of  them  already  written  by  1593  and  well  known,  like  Donne's 
lyrical  poetry,  in  manuscript.  Donne's  Satires  are^iiiLm 
in  decasyllabic  couplets,  the  measure  universally  followed  by 
regular  satire  in  later  times.  But  Donne's  verse,  here  even 
more  than  elsewhere,  is  rough^^jrregular,  and  careless  of  the 
graces  of  versification.  Donne's  style,  t(^,  like  his  verse,  is 
rugged  anTconversational,  yet  concise  and  compact  in  thought 
and  at  times  obscure  from  the  use  of  a  Latinized  construction;* 


320  ELIZABETHAN  SATIRE 

but  ever  vigorous,  true  to  the  object  seen  and  observed  at  an 
angle  of  the  author's  own.  The  subjects  of  Donne's  Satires 
and  their  method,  combine  the  narrative  and  reflective  satire 
of  Horace  with  the  spirit  of  direct  rebuke.  While  prevailingly 
pessimistic  in  tone,  they  by  no  means  assume  the  Juvenalian 
attitude  of  authority  to  castigate  vice  and  patronize  virtue. 
The  first  satire  of  Donne  describes  how  a  young  gallant  of  the 
time  took  the  scholar  from  his  books  to  w^alk  abroad,  the 
gallant's  estimate  of  passing  acquaintances,  and  his  flight 
from  his  friend  at  sight  of  a  pretty  face  at  a  window.  The 
second  attacks  the  vices  and  chicanery  of  lawyers,  as  the  fifth 
lays  bare  the  abuses  and  delays  of  justice;  the  fourth  describes, 
in  Horatian  manner,  that  ubiquitous  habitant  of  civilized 
places,  the  bore;  whilst  the  last  and  doubtful  one  makes  sport 
of  the  new  carpet-knights  of  King  James'  creation,  a  stock 
theme  for  the  ridicule  of  the  age,  and  concludes  with  some 
references,  more  free  spoken  than  courteous,  to  Essex,  the 
late  queen,  and  the  new  king.  By  far  the  best  of  these  Sat- 
ires is  the  third,which  deals  in  a  serious  tone,  rising  to  momen- 
tary eloquence,  of  an  unwonted  theme  for  satire  of  classical 
type,  religion.  Donne  hits  off  in  capital  manner  those  who 
seek  variously  for  true  religion,  telling  how  one. 

Thinking  her  unhous'd  here,  and  fled  from  us, 
Seeks  her  at  Rome,  there,  because  he  doth  know 
That  she  was  there  a  thousand  years  ago; 

a  second  seeker, 

to  such  brave  loves  will  not  be  enthrall'd, 
But  loves  her  only  who  at  Geneva  is  call'd 
Religion  —  plain,  simple,  sullen,  young, 
Contemptuous,  yet  unhandsome. 

Still  another  "stays  still  [that  is,  always]  at  home  here,"  and 
that 

because 

Some  preachers 

bid  him  think  that  she 
Which  dwells  with  us  is  only  perfect. 


LODGE'S  "FIG  FOR  MOMUS"  321 

Whilst  a  fourth 

doth  abhor 
All,  because  all  can  not  be  good;   as  one, 
Knowing  some  women  false,  dares  to  marry  none. 

Then  rising  to  a  higher  strain  he  sings: 
Though  truth  and  falsehood  be 
Near  twins,  yet  truth  a  little  elder  is. 
Be  busy  to  seek  her;   believe  me  this, 
He  *s  not  of  none,  nor  worst,  that  seeks  the  best: 
To  adore,  or  scorn  an  image  or  protest. 
May  all  be  bad.     Doubt  wisely,  in  strange  way 
To  stand  inquiring  right,  is  not  to  stray; 
To  sleep  or  run  wrong,  is.     On  a  huge  hill, 
Cragg'd  and  steep.  Truth  stands,  and  he  that  will 
Reach  her,  about  must,  and  about  must  go 
And  what  the  hill's  suddenness  resists,  win  so; 
Yet  strive  so,  that  before  age.  Death's  twilight. 
Thy  soul  rest,  for  none  can  work  in  the  night. 

This   passage   marks   the   height   of  Elizabethan   satire   and 
Donne   stands   for  his  sincerity,  for  the   new   light   that  his 

original  mind  casts  upon  what  he  sees,  as  for  the  steadiness 

of-his  vision  and  honest  outspokenness,  foremost  among  Eliza- 
be  than  satirists. 

In  1595  Thomas  Lodge,  long  fledged  to  literature  of  almost 
every  type,  printed  his  Fig  for  Momus.  These  satires,  like 
Donne's,  were  written  in  decasyllabic  couplets,  but  Lodge's 
regularity  and  smoothness  of  versification  deserve  the  name 
of  heroic  couplet  as  Donne's  verses  never  could.  It  is  a  moot 
question  as  to  whether  Donne,  Lodge,  or  Joseph  Hall  is  to 
be  credited  with  the  choice  of  this  meter  as  the  fitting  raiment 
for  satirical  verse.  Hall  certainly  wrote  decasyllabics  more 
nearly  approaching  the  compactness  and  regularity  of  those 
of  Dryden  and  his  time  than  any  other  man  of  early  days. 
But  the  whole  question  is  wrapped  up  with  another,  who  was 
the  first  English  satirist,  an  honor  which  Hall  claimed  for7\ 
himself.  Donne  seems  the  best  claimant,  although  his  work 
was  published  long  after  Lodge's  and  Hall's,  which  latter  was 
in   print  by   1 597.     Donne  was  widely  read  in  manuscript; 


322  ELIZABETHAN  SATIRE 

Hall  was  most  generally  popular.  Lodge  seems  to  have  been 
with  some  justice  neglected,  as  the  four  satires  which  constitute 
his  Fig  fo7-  Momtis  are  alike  wanting  in  "the  Horatian  urbanity 
and  the  Juvenalian  vigor."  The  latter  Roman  poet  is  plainly 
Lodge's  model,  not  Horace  as  is  sometimes  said.  But  the 
English  satirist  shows  many  touches  with  both  Horace  and 
Persius,  while  maintaining  an  earnest  and  optimistic  English 
spirit.  Lodge's  Fig  for  Momus  is  singularly  free  from  local 
color  and  contemporary  allusion  and,  while  avoiding  the 
affectation  of  a  Roman  atmosphere,  is  satire  in  the  abstract 
and  wide  of  the  concreteness  of  Donne's  allusions. 

Joseph  Hall,  later  successively  Bishop  of  Exeter  and  of 
Norwich,  was  by  far  the  most  generally  read  of  Elizabethan 
satirists.  Born  in  the  year  of  the  Armada,  a  Cambridge  man, 
he  lived  to  show  his  loyalty  to  church  and  state  in  now  for- 
gotten writings  and  died  a  very  old  man  shortly  before  the 
restoration  of  King  Charles.  Hall's  Satires  amount  to  some 
thirty-five  in  number.  The  entire  work  is  called  Virgide- 
miarum,  Six  Books,  of  buffetings;  the  earlier  books  are 
described  as  "  Toothless  Satyrs,"  and  subdivided  into  three 
books,  respectively,  poetical,  academical,  and  moral,  1597; 
while  the  other  three  appeared  in  the  following  year  under 
title  Three  Last  Books  of  Biting  Satyrs.  These  distinctions, 
however,  are  not  vital.  It  was  Milton  who  years  after,  in  the 
heat  of  religious  controversy  in  which  the  episcopal  satirist 
held  the  opposite  side,  attacked  Hall  in  a  passage  negligible 
for  its  personalities  but  not  for  the  view  of  contemporary  satire 
which  it  discloses.  "A  satire,"  writes  the  great  poet,  "as  it 
iwas  born  out  of  tragedy,  so  ought  to  resemble  his  parentage, 
'to  strike  high  and  adventure  dangerously  at  the  most  eminent 
vices  among  the  greatest  persons  and  not  to  creep  into  every 
blind  tap-house,  that  fears  a  constable  more  than  a  satire. 
But  that  such  a  poem  should  be  toothless,  I  still  affirm  it  to  be 
a  bull,  taking  away  the  essence  of  that  which  it  calls  itself. 
For  if  it  bite  neither  the  persons  nor  the  vices,  how  is  it  a 
satire  ?  And  if  it  bite  either,  how  is  it  toothless  ?  So  that 
itoothless  satires  are  as  much  as  if  he  had  said  toothless  teeth." 

The    compactness    and    regularity    of  Hall's    meter   has 


THE  "SATIRES"  OF  HALL  323 

already  been  referred  to;  his  style  was  scar^cely  less  suggestive 
and  prophetic  of  the  age  to  come,  in  its  hardness,  brilliancy, 
wit,  and  restraint.  Concerning  his  obscurity,  his  fondness  for 
unfamiliar  allusions  and  a  certain  remoteness  of  phraseology, 
the  last  has  been  referred  to  Hall's  avowed  admiration  for 
Spenser  and  imitation  of  him,  his  fondness  for  unfamiliar 
allusions,  to  his  following  of  the  Roman  satirists.  Hall's  vo- 
cabulary is  not  barbarous,  as  has  sometimes  been  charged,  and 
as  to  the  other  faults  of  obscurity  they  belonged  in  a  measure 
to  the  contemporary  conception  of  satire  whence  they  have 
descended  into  the  critical  opinions  of  modern  times.  Indeed, 
it  is  quite  notable  that  the  first  of  the  "biting  satires"  is  the 
best  imitation  of  Juvenal  as  it  is  likewise  the  most  difficult  to 
understand. 

The  subject  of  obscurity  in  poetry  is  of  a  wider  interest 
than  the  satires  of  Hall  and  I  can  not  forebear  the  quotation  of 
two  fine  passages  of  our  Elizabethan  poets  on  the  topic.  The 
first  is  from  Daniel's  Musophilos  and  reads: 

For  not  discreetly  to  compose  our  parts, 
Unto  the  frame  of  men  (which  we  must  be) 

Is  to  put  off  ourselves  and  make  our  ans 
Rebels  to  nature  and  society. 

Whereby  we  come  to  bury  our  desarts 
In  the  obscure  grave  of  singularity. 

A  very  becoming  opinion  is  this  for  "well  languaged  Daniel," 
true  poet  if  somewhat  conventional  man  that  he  was.  But  it 
should  be  read  with  this  weightier  passage  of  Chapman, 
Homeri  Metaphrastes  as  he  delighted  to  call  himself.  "Ob- 
scurity in  affection  of  words  and  indigested  conceits  is  pedanti- 
cal  and  childish;  but  where  it  shroudeth  itself  in  the  heart 
of  his  subject,  uttered  with  fitness  of  figure  and  expressive 
epithets,  with  that  darkness  I  will  still  labor  to  be  shrouded." 

To  return  to  Hall,  in  his  Satires  "poetical,"  he  declares  that 
"the  nine  Muses  are  turned  harlots"  in  his  degenerate  age,>^ 
inveighs  against  the  "huff-cap  terms  and  thundering  threats'* 
of  tragedies  like  Tamhurlaine,  the  license  of  the  stage  clown, 
the   absurdities   of  experiments   in    classical   versification   in 


324  ELIZABETHAN  SATIRE 

English,  the  affectations  and  warmth  of  amatory  poetry,  and 
other  Uke  matters.  There  is  wealth  of  allusion  to  contem- 
porary literature  in  these  and  in  the  "academical  satires" 
where  the  bad  poetry  of  one  Labeo  and  the  folly  of  writing 
for  money  are  especially  attacked.  But  all  is  so  obscurely 
phrased  that,  save  the  mention  of  Tamhurlaine  and  enthusi- 
astic praise  of  Spenser,  most  of  Hall's  allusions  remain  prob- 
lematic. The  interesting  thing  about  the  satirist's  literary 
criticism  is  the  consciousness  of  his  attack  on  the  prevailing 
romantic  spirit  of  his  age :  and  this  at  its  very  height.  Without 
here  going  further  into  the  subject-matter  of  Hall's  Satires 
it  may  be  noted  that  the  remainder  is  of  the  conventional 
Roman  type  alike  for  its  subject  and  its  treatment.  Hall  was 
frankly  imitative  and  while  his  attitude  has  much  of  the, 
assumption  of  the  professed  moralist,  there  was  clearly  in 
this  young  man  of  twenty-three  the  making  of  the  serious  and 
militant  bishop  that  he  afterward  became. 

As  much  can  not  be  said  for  John  Marston,  the  dramatist, 
although  he,  too,  died  a  clergymen  of  the  Established  Church. 
Marston,  who  was  of  Hall's  age,  followed  up  the  publication 
of  Hall's  Satires,  with  five  Satires  and  his  Metamorphosis 
of  Pigmalions  Image,  published  together  in  1598.  Later  in 
the  same  year  his  Scourge  of  Villainy  appeared,  made  up  of 
eleven  more  satires.  The  author  signed  both  works  with  a 
pseudonym,  W.  Kinsader;  and  they  enjoyed  for  a  time  a 
popularity  almost  equal  to  the  Satires  of  Hall.  Marston 
followed  Donne  and  Hall  in  the  now  finally  approved  decasyl- 
labic_couplet,  but  with  far  less  ease,  compactness,  and  smooth- 
ness than  the  latter,  and  with  a  corresponding  want  of  epi- 
grammatic effect  though  not  without  a  gain  in  vigor.  Marston 
Is  intentionally  crabbed  and  grotesque  and  his  vocabulary  of 
"new  minted  epithets,"  so  ridiculed  by  Jonson,  has  justly 
been  described  as  monstrous  though  he  only  employs  such 
terms  in  his  more  conscious  moments.  Marston  is  no  more 
obscure  than  the  other  satirists  of  his  time.  The  range  of 
Marston's  topics  includes  the  usual  "satirical"  material — hyp- 
ocrites, flatterers,  the  foolish  lover,  lust  and  luxury,  procras- 
tination, effeminacy,  affectations,  and  personal  foibles.     Hall's 


THE  "SATIRES"  OF  MARSTON  325 

work  was  evidently  their  immediate  inspiration,  although 
evidences  of  the  author's  familiarity  with  Roman  satire  are 
not  wanting,  and  Satire  I F  o(  the  earher  set  contains  a  direct 
answer  to  some  of  Hall's  strictures  upon  contemporary  litera- 
ture. The  Scourge  of  Villainy  sounds  a  note  of  conscious 
literary  coxcombry  which  is  one  of  the  peculiar  characteristics 
of  Marston.  The  second  edition,  that  of  1599,  is  dedicated 
"To  his  most  esteemed  and  best  beloved  Self."  Then  follows 
a  series  of  impertinent  stanzas  headed:  "To  Detraction  I 
present  my  Poesy";  and  the  work  concludes  with  an  address 
to  "Everlasting  Oblivion": 

Thou  mighty  gulf,  insatiate  cormorant! 
Deride  me  not,  though  I  seem  petulant 
To  fall  into  thy  chops.     Let  others  pray 
Forever  their  fair  poems  flourish  may: 
But  as  for  me,  hungry  Oblivion, 
Devour  me  quick,  accept  my  orison. 
My  earnest  prayers  which  do  importune  thee, 
With  gloomy  shade  of  thy  still  emper}'. 
To  veil  both  me  and  my  rude  poesy. 

On  all  of  which  it  has  been  sagaciously  observed  that  "ob- 
livion is  too  easily  had  ever  to  be  loudly  demanded."  None 
the  less  there  is  merit  in  these  vigorous  if  not  quite  always, 
honest  verses  of  Marston,  nor  are  they  wanting  in  a  sense  of 
design.  Thus  in  the  "Cynic  Satire,"  as  he  calls  it,  his  theme 
(in  which  we  recognize  a  parody  on  the  desperate  exclamation 
of  Shakespeare's  Richard  HI)  is  "A  man,  a  man,  my  king- 
dom for  a  man!"  and  creature  after  creature,  all  but  seeming 
men,  parade  before  the  satirist,  to  be  anatomized  under  the 
eye  of  Lynceus  who,  it  will  be  remembered,  of  all  the  Argo- 
nauts was  keenest  of  sight. 

Elizabethan  satire,  in  the  restrictive  sense  and  as  compared 
with  that  of  other  ages,  can  not  be  rated  very  high.  The  mis- 
anthropy of  Marston  and  Hall's  judicial  cynicism  hardly  ring 
quite  true.  Indeed,  these  worldly-wise  satirists  were  sated 
with  the  gauds  and  snares  of  life  at  two  or  three  and  twenty. 
But  for  any  deep-seated  convictions  on  moral  issues,  any  real 


326  SATIRE  AND  EPIGRAM 

detestation  and  revolt  against  evil,  such  as  distinguished  Jon- 
son's  dramatic  satires  despite  his  self-poise  and  arrogance,  we 
may  look  through  the  easy  going  pages  of  these  young  literary 
triflers  in  vain. 

If  we  turn  from  the  field  of  formal  and  more  or  less  ex- 
tended satire  in  the  manner  of  the  ancients  to  the  many  epi- 
grammatists and  writers  of  irregular  satirical  verses,  we  find 
the  species  holding  its  own  with  the  many  satirical  pamphlets 
of  the  prose  pamphleteers.  Thus  we  have,  in  1598,  the  year 
of  Marston's  Scourge  of  Villainy,  Thomas  Bastard's  Chres- 
toleros,  a  collection  of  two  hundred  and  ninety  epigrams; 
Edward  Guilpin's  vernacular  and  interesting  Skialetheia,  "a 
Shadow  of  Truth  in  Certain  Epigams  and  Satires";  and 
William  Rankins'  Satires  in  seven-line  stanzas,  ridiculing  the 
absurdities  of  contemporary  fashions.  Rankins  had  pre- 
viously trespassed  in  this  field  with  his  more  notorious  prose 
satires,  The  Mirror  of  Monsters  and  The  English  Ape,  in  the 
former  of  which  he  attacked  especially  "the  spotted  enormi- 
ties of  players."  In  1599  appeared  John  Weever's  Epigrams 
in  the  Oldest  Cut  and  Newest  Fashion,  and  also  Microcynicon, 
the  latter  unnecessarily  attributed  to  the  dramatist  Thomas 
MIddleton.  The  prose  pamphlets  of  Nash  and  Harvey,  the 
last  in  their  notorious  war  of  personal  abuse,  were  but  a  year 
or  two  old  in  1599.  Hall's  satires  had  come  out  in  the  pre- 
vious year,  and  Dr.  Rainolds  was  thundering  from  Oxford 
his  total  Overthrow  of  Stage  Plays.  Evidently  this  plain  and 
bitter  speaking  was  overdone;  for,  towards  the  end  of  1599, 
an  order  was  issued  by  the  ecclesiastical  authorities,  command- 
ing that  Hall's  and  Marston's  satires,  the  Microcynicon,  and 
certain  other  books,  among  them  those  of  the  Nash-Harvey 
controversy,  should  *'be  brought  to  the  Bishop  of  London  to 
be  burnt,"  and  that  "no  satires  or  epigrams  be  printed  here- 
after." This  order  was  duly  executed  as  to  most  of  these 
works;  It  was  "staid"  as  to  Hall,  by  what  Influence  or  for  what 
reason  is  to  us  unknown. 

But  satire  and  epigram  were  not  thus  to  be  put  down. 
Other  epigrams  were  those  of  the  courtier  and  author  of 
Nosce  Teipsum,  Sir  John  Davles,  of  various  date  and  writing; 


ELIZABETHAN  EPIGRAM  327 

those  of  his  namesake,  John  Davles  of  Hereford,  writing- 
master,  entitled  The  Scourge  of  Folly,  1611;  and  George 
Wither's  Abuses  fVhipt  and  Stript,  of  the  same  date.  Fitz- 
geofFrey  and  Owen  penned  epigrams  of  classical  flavor  in 
Latin;  at  the  other  extreme,  Samuel  Rowlands,  general 
pamphleteer  and  hack-writer,  put  forth,  between  1600  and 
twenty  years  later,  a  series  of  quaintly  named  satirical  book- 
lets in  verse,  among  them  The  Letting  of  Humor  s  Blood  in 
the  Head  Vein,  'T  is  Merry  When  Gossips  Meet,  Diogenes 
Lanthorn,  and  the  like.  In  the  very  last  years  of  Shakespeare's 
lifetime,  and  after  some  subsidence,  the  epigram  revived  into 
a  sudden  brief  lease  of  life.  For  in  1613  Sir  John  Harington 
published  the  first  of  his  Epigrams  Pleasant  and  Serious,  and 
Richard  Braithwaite,  his  rollicking  Strappado  for  the  Devil; 
while  in  the  next  year,  that  of  Shakespeare's  death,  appeared 
Robert  Anton's  rare  volume  of  literary  epigrams  called  Vice's 
Anatomy  Scourged  and,  most  important  of  all,  Ben  Jonson's 
Epigrams,  which  form  one  of  the  divisions  of  the  collective 
edition  of  his  works,  1616. 

The  Elizabethan  epigram  can  not  be  considered  as  of 
much  higher  general  merit  than  was  the  more  formal  satirical 
verse  of  the  day.  The  word,  epigram,  was  employed  with 
great  looseness  to  signify  almost  any  brief  non-lyrical  poem  not 
involving  a  narrative;  and  much  occasional  verse  was  in- 
cluded in  the  mass.  Of  the  English  epigrammatists,  Jonson 
is  easily  the  first,  though  there  is  wit  and  merit  of  its  kind  both 
in  Bastard's  Chrestoleros  and  in  the  Epigrams  of  Sir  John 
Harington.  These  lines  of  Jonson,  for  example,  "On  Some- 
thing that  Walks  Somewhere,"  are  epigram  in  the  restrictive 
sense,  and  an  excellent  specimen  of  Jonson's  satirical  wit: 

At  court  I  met  it,  in  clothes  brave  enough 

To  be  a  courtier;   and  looks  grave  enough 

To  seem  a  statesman:   as  I  near  it  came. 

It  made  me  a  great  face;   I  asked  the  name. 

A  Lord,  it  cried,  buried  in  flesh  and  blood. 

And  such  from  whom  let  no  man  hope  least  good, 

For  I  will  do  none;   and  as  little  ill, 

For  I  will  dare  none:  Good  Lord,  walk  dead  still. 


328  SATIRE  AND  EPIGRAM 

But  Jonson  considered  this  fine  epitaph  on  his  friend,  Sir  John 

Roe,  likewise  an  epigram. 

In  place  of  'scutcheons  that  should  deck  thy  hearse, 

Take  better  ornaments,  my  tears  and  verse. 

If  any  sword  could  save  from  Fates,  Roe's  could;    - 

If  any  muse  outlive  their  spite,  his  can; 
If  any  friends'  tears  could  restore,  his  would; 

If  any  pious  life  e'er  lifted  man 
To  heaven,  his  hath:  O  happy  state!  wherein 
We,  sad  for  him,  may  glory,  and  not  sin. 

However,  the  real  interest  in  verse  of  this  kind  lies  in  its 
allusiveness  and  in  the  illustrations  that  it  offers  of  the  customs 
and  manners  of  its  time.  Though  even  here,  such  was  the 
force  of  precedent  and  example  in  an  age  of  classically  edu- 
cated men,  that  many  of  the  topics  as  well  as  the  treatment  at 
large  of  both  satire  and  epigram  must  be  sought,  not  in  con- 
temporary Elizabethan  life,  but  in  the  pages  of  Horace,  Juvenal, 
and  Martial. 

If  we  turn  now  from  satire  and  epigram  in  verse  to  its 
kindred  prose,  we  trespass  into  an  even  larger  field,  and  one  in 
which  division  and  classification  become  well-nigh  impossible. 
In  the  previous  chapter  of  this  book  devoted  to  the  pamphlet 
and  the  prose  of  controversy  much  of  the  earlier  material, 
genetically  to  be  designated  satire  in  prose,  has  already  found 
its  proper  place  of  mention.  Nash  and  Dekker  in  their  prose 
are  nothing  if  not  satirical,  whether  the  satire  is  incidental  to 
fiction  as  in  Jack  fVilton,  or  to  personal  or  political  contro- 
versy. Such  work  as  Dekker's  Gulls'  Hornbook  is  of  course 
wholly  and  delightfully  humorous  and  satirical,  and  it  links 
in  its  origin  and  association  not  only  with  the  wider  continental 
satire,  of  which  Grobianus  is  the  type,  but  also  with  the  inter- 
esting series  of  English  pamphlets  in  which  the  nature  and 
the  shifts  of  contemporary  vagabonds  and  sharpers  are  un- 
masked and,  in  unmasking,  satirized.  As  early  as  1565, 
John  Awdeley  put  forth  his  Fraternity  of  Vagabonds,  and  two 
years  later  Thomas  Harman  followed  with  his  Caveat  for 
Common  Cursetors.  Both  describe  the  various  types  of 
thieves,   sharpers,   and   beggars  that  infested   the   streets   of 


SATIRICAL  PROSE  PAMPHLETS  329 

London,  Harman  dealing  even  with  their  slang.  These 
earlier  works,  however,  are  less  satirical  than  seriously  descrip- 
tive. Greene  was  not  without  his  knowledge  of  them  when 
he  turned  his  ready  pen  to  depicting  the  life  of  their  successors 
in  his  series  of  five  pamphlets  on  the  haunts,  characters,  and 
subterfuges  of  the  conycatchers,  as  he  called  the  rogues,  con- 
fidence men,  and  their  like  of  the  metropolis.  These  pam- 
phlets begin  with  A  Notable  Discovery  of  Cosenage,  registered 
as  The  Art  of  Conycatching  in  1 59 1,  and  extend  through 
several  additional  parts  of  similar  title  to  The  Black  Book's 
Messenger  in  the  following  year.  In  them  Greene  drew  not 
only  on  previous  writers  but  on  his  own  experiences,  writing 
up  his  material  precisely  as  a  modern  reporter  might  do, 
with  considerably  less  regard  for  mere  facts  than  for  a  lively 
and  effective  presentation  of  his  subject.  The  like  series  of 
Dekker,  which  was  published  early  in  the  reign  of  James,  while 
borrowing  much  from  his  predecessors,  is  more  humorous 
and  satirical  in  character.  This  pamphlet  work  of  Dekker's 
begins  with  The  Batchelors'  Banquet,  in  1 603,  and  extends 
through  The  Dead  Term,  The  Bellman  of  London,  Lanthorn 
and  Candlelight  to  The  Gulls'  Hornbook,  in  1609.  Samuel 
Rowlands  was  Dekker's  immediate  rival  in  this  exploitation 
of  low  life.  But  his  many  booklets,  such  as  Greene's  Ghost, 
1602,  and  Martin  Markall,  1610,  show  neither  Dekker's  genial 
humor,  literary  aptitude,  nor  powers  of  observation. 

Into  the  smaller  satirical  pamphlet  literature  at  large  it  is 
unnecesssary  for  us  to  go  far.  It  descends  to  mere  broadside 
and  catchpenny,  now  laughing  at  folly  with  Robert  Armin, 
a  professional  stage  clown,  in  his  Fool  upon  Fool  or  Sevfn 
Sorts  of  Sots,  1605,  and  Nest  of  Ninnies,  1608;  now  lam- 
pooning contemporary  fashion  in  Rankins'  English  Ape,  1588; 
attacking  the  stage  as  in  the  same  truculent  writer's  Mirror 
of  Monsters,  of  the  previous  year,  or  Dr.  Rainolds'  Overthrow 
of  Stage  Palys,  1 599;  or  deriding  the  vanities  of  feminine 
attire,  as  in  Gosson's  Pleasant  Quips  for  Upstart  New-Fan- 
gled  Gentlewomen,  1595.  A  later  attack  of  this  kind,  entitled 
The  Arraignment  of  Lewd,  Idle,  Forward  and  Inconstant 
Women,  by  Joseph  Swetnam,  16 15,  called  forth  a  number  of 


330  SATIRE  AND   EPIGRAM 

retorts,  some  of  them  as  violent  and  irrational  as  their  cause 
and,  among  them,  an  anonymous  satirical  comedy,  called 
Swetnam,  the  Woman  Hater  Arraigned  by  Women,  1620,  a 
very  curious  production.  This  small  prose  of  satirical  con- 
temporary comment  shades  off  into  religious  as  well  as  social 
satire  and  controversy;  for  these  satirists,  objectors,  and  re- 
formers were  often,  like  Gosson,  Stubbes,  Wither,  and  Prynne 
somewhat  later,  Puritans  and  biased  in  their  attitude  towards 
life  and  the  habits  of  their  fellow  men  by  a  creed  the  rigor  of 
which  discomforted  not  only  its  professors  but  those  who  had 
the  misfortune  to  differ  with  them  as  well.  The  typical  social 
satirist  of  this  type  of  strictly  Elizabethan  times  is  Philip 
Stubbes,  the  writer  of  several  religious  pamphlets  in  the  eighties 
and  early  nineties.  It  was  in  1583  that  he  published  his 
Anatomy  of  Abuse,  "containing  a  discovery  or  brief  survey  of 
such  notable  vices  and  imperfections  as  now  reign  in  many 
Christian  countries  of  the  world;  but  especially  in  a  very 
famous  island  called  Ailgna  (anagram  for  Anglia),  together 
with  most  fearful  examples  of  God's  judgment  executed  upon 
the  wicked  for  the  same."  Stubbes'  book  is  quaint  and  di- 
verting in  parts;  and  it  is  not  without  a  certain  force  for  its 
plain  speaking,  honesty,  and  homely  humor.  But  the  last 
is  for  the  most  part  unconscious;  for  Stubbes  was  terribly 
in  earnest,  and  trivial  follies  and  pastimes,  harmless  in  them- 
selves, are  borne  down  in  common  overthrow  with  the  seven, 
and  other  deadly  Puritan  sins  in  his  trenchant  anathemas  as 
things  accurst.  The  following  is  one  of  Stubbes*  "fearful 
examples,"  somewhat  curtailed  in  its  diffusive  eloquence: 

A  gentlewoman  of  Eprautna  (that  is  Antwerp)  of  late  .  .  . 
being  a  very  rich  merchantman's  daughter,  upon  a  time  was  invited 
to  a  bridal  or  wedding,  against  which  day  she  made  great  preparation 
for  the  pluming  of  herself  in  gorgeous  array,  that  as  her  body  was 
most  beautiful,  fair,  and  proper,  so  her  attire  in  every  respect  might 
be  correspondent  to  the  same.  For  the  accomplishment  whereof 
she  curled  her  hair,  she  dyed  her  locks,  and  laid  them  out  after  the 
best  manner.  She  colored  her  face  with  waters  and  ointments. 
But  in  no  case  could  she  get  any  (so  curious  and  dainty  she  was) 
that  could  starch  and  set  her  ruffs  and  neckerchers  to  her  mind   .    .    . 


STUBBES'  ''ANATOMY  OF  ABUSE"         331 

Then  fell  she  to  swear  and  tear,  to  curse  and  ban,  casting  the  ruffs 
under  her  feet  and  wishing  that  the  devil  might  take  her  when  she 
wear  any  of  those  neckerchers  again.  In  the  mean  time  (through 
the  sufferance  of  God)the  devil,  transforming  himself  into  the  form  of 
a  young  man  .  .  .  came  in.  .  .and,  seeing  her  thus  agonized  and  in 
such  a  pelting  chafe,  he  took  in  hand  the  setting  of  her  ruffs,  which  he 
performed  to  her  great  contentation  and  liking.  This  doen,  the  young 
man  kissed  her,  in  the  doing  whereof  he  writhe  her  neck  in  sunder, 
so  she  died  miserably,  her  body  being  metamorphosed  into  black 
and  blue  colors,  most  ugglesome  to  behold.  Preparance  was  made 
for  her  burial,  a  rich  coffin  provided,  and  her  fearful  body  was  laid 
there  in,  and  it  covered  very  sumptuously.  Four  men  immediately 
assayed  to  lift  up  the  corpse,  but  could  not  move  it;  then  six  attempted 
the  like,  but  could  not  once  stir  it  from  the  place  where  it  stood. 
Whereat  the  standers  by  marvelling,  caused  the  coffin  to  be  opened, 
to  see  the  cause  thereof.  Where  they  found  the  body  to  be  taken 
away;  and  a  black  cat,  very  lean  and  deformed,  sitting  in  the  coffin, 
setting  of  great  ruffs,  and  frizzling  of  hair,  to  the  great  fear  and  wonder 
of  all  beholders. 

What  the  epigram  is,  as  contrasted  with  the  great  variety 
of  satirical  verse  that  surrounds  it,  the  "character"  is  in  its/ 
own  group  of  prose  satires.  "To  square  out  a  character  by[ 
our  English  level,"  says  Sir  Thomas  Overbury,  "it  is  a  picture, 
real  or  personal,  quaintly  drawn  in  various  colors,  all  of  them 
heightemed  by  one  shadowing":  in  words,  less  figurative,  a 
"character"  is  a  brief  descriptive  sketch  of  a  personage,  in-  ,^ 

volving  a  ruling  quality  or,  of  a  moral  quality,  exemplified  in  a  1  \\(:' 

typical  personage.  The  remote  origin  of  this  species  of  essay,  i\  ;  '"■ 
(for  it  is  clearly  such),  is  traceable  to  Plato's  disciple,  Tyr- 
tamus  of  Lesbos,  generally  known  by  the  name  that  his  master 
bestowed  on  him  for  his  eloquence  as  Theophrastus,  the  divine 
speaker.  In  1592  appeared  Isaac  Casaubon's  Latin  trans- 
lation of  the  twenty-nine  extant  Characters  of  Theophrastus, 
and  to  this  may  be  confidently  attributed  the  vogue  of  this 
peculiar  genre  in  English  literature  a  short  time  after.  De- 
spite some  suggestive  forerunners  such  as  Harman's  descrip- 
tions of  the  rogues  of  his  earlier  time,  already  mentioned,  and 
further  back  (if  we  must  turn  to  poetry)  Chaucer's  inimitable 
personages  of  the  "Prologue"  to  The  Canterbury  Tales,  to  Ben 


v\ 


332     THE  EPIGRAM  AND  THE   "CHARACTER" 

Jonson,  who  read  everything,  must  be  assigned  the  first  step 
towards  a  popularization  of  the  "character."  Thus  the 
dramatis  personae  of  Every  Man  out  of  his  Humor  dis- 
closes after  the  name  of  each  person  a  brief  satirical 
description,  designating  his  salient  traits  or  "humor." 

Puntarvolo.  A  vainglorious  knight,  over-Englishing  his  travels, 
and  wholly  consecrated  to  singularity;  the  very  Jacob's  staff  of  compli- 
ment; a  sir  that  hath  lived  to  see  the  revolution  of  time  in  most  of 
his  apparel.  Of  presence  good  enough,  but  so  palpably  affected  in 
his  ov^^n  praise,  that  for  want  of  flatterers  he  commends  himself,  to 
the  floutage  of  his  own  family.  He  deals  upon  returns,  and  strange 
performances,  resolving,  in  despite  of  public  derision,  to  stick  to  his 
own  particular  fashion,  phrase,  and  gesture. 

In  the  text  of  Cynthia  s  Revels  there  are  several  passages 
in  which  personages  are  thus  wittily  and  succinctly  described. 
Indeed  it  might  be  worthy  some  consideration  whether  Jon- 
son's  whole  notion  of  character  portrayed  by  ruling  trait  or 
-!lhumor"  may  not  have  been  originally  suggested  by  the 
Theophrastian  "character." 

These  plays  of  Jonson  preceded  Characters  of  Vices  and 
Virtues  by  Joseph  Hall,  the  satirist,  by  some  nine  or  ten  years; 
but  it  is  specifically  to  Hall  and  not  to  Jonson  that  the  "char- 
acter" in  its  stricter  Theophrastian  form  owed  its  popularity. 
Jonson,  as  a  dramatist,  had  emphasized  the  sketch  of  a  per- 
sonage involving  a  ruling  quality,  and  to  this  point  of  approach 
later  "characterism,"  as  it  was  called  in  its  time,  returned. 
Hall,  on  the  other  hand,  as  a  moralist,  conceived  of  the  charac- 
ter as  a  moral  quality  exemplified  in  a  typical  personage.  Be- 
tween his  English,  VtrgiJemiarum,  Six  Books,  1597,  and  his 
Characters,  printed  in  1609,  Hall  had  published  a  witty  Latin 
satire  entitled  Mundus  Alter  et  Idem,  1 605,  translated  as 
The  Discovery  of  a  New  World,  three  years  later.  Hall's 
Characters  fall  into  "characterisms"  of  virtues  and,  secondly, 
of  vices.  Individual  essays  treat  of  the  wise  man,  the  valiant 
man,  the  truly  noble,  the  good  magistrate;  the  hypocrite,  the 
busybody,  the  malcontent.  It  is  thus  that  the  last,  a  favorite 
of  the  age  in  life  as  in  the  drama,  is  in  part  described: 


THE  "CHARACTERS"  OF  HALL  333 

He  IS  neither  well  full  nor  fasting;  and  though  he  abound  with 
complaints,  yet  nothing  dislikes  him  but  the  present;  for  what  he 
condemned  while  it  was,  once  past  he  magnifies,  and  strives  to  recall 
it  out  of  the  jaws  of  time.  What  he  hath  he  seeth  not,  his  eyes  are  so 
taken  up  with  what  he  wants;  and  what  he  sees  he  cares  not  for, 
because  he  cares  so  much  for  that  which  is  not.  .  .  .  Every  blessing 
hath  somewhat  to  disparage  and  distaste  it;  children  bring  cares, 
single  life  is  wild  and  solitary,  eminency  is  envious,  retiredness  ob- 
scure, fasting  painful,  satiety  unwieldly,  religion  nicely  severe,  liberty 
is  lawless,  wealth  burdensome,  mediocrity  contemptible.  Everything 
faulteth,  either  in  too  much  or  too  little.  This  man  is  ever  head- 
strong and  self-willed,  neither  is  he  always  tied  to  esteem  or  pronounce 
according  to  reason;  some  things  he  must  dislike  he  knows  not  where- 
fore, but  he  likes  them  not;  and  otherwhere,  rather  than  not  censure, 
he  will  accuse  a  man  of  virtue. 

Hall's  Characters  are  exceedingly  well  written,  full  of 
worldly  wisdom  and  animated  by  a  sound  average  philosophy 
of  life.  They  are  often  wittily  expressed.  His  shortcomings 
are  incessant  contrast  and  antithesis.  We  weary  soon  of  his 
neatness  of  phrase,  and  his  literary  tidiness;  and  we  breathe 
uneasily  before  long  in  this  atmosphere  of  admirable  moral 
abstraction. 

It  is  not  unlikely  that  the  famous  Characters  of  Sir  Thomas 
Overbury  were  written  much  about  the  time  of  Hall's,  of  which 
however  they  were  far  from  a  mere  imitation.  Their  extra- 
ordinary popularity  —  six  editions  in  a  single  year  and  sixteen 
in  less  than  a  generation  —  is  referable  in  part  to  their  merit, 
but  mainly  to  the  notorious  murder  of  Overbury,  which  grew 
out  of  the  greatest  scandal  of  the  court  of  King  James.  Sir 
Thomas  Overbury  was  born  in  Gloucestershire  in  1581  and 
educated  at  Queen's  College,  Oxford  and  the  Middle  Temple. 
He  became  an  intimate  associate  and  adviser  of  the  king's 
favorite.  Sir  Robert  Carr,  later  Viscount  Rochester,  and  was 
knighted  by  King  James  in  1608.  Rochester  had  been  carry- 
ing on  a  flirtation  with  the  frivolous  young  Countess  of  Essex 
whose  boy  husband  (worthy  of  a  better  wife)  had  been  travel- 
ing extensively  abroad.  Upon  his  return,  although  compelled 
to  live  with  him,  his  countess  showed  for  the  earl,  her  husband, 
nothing  but  repugnance  and  contempt.     After  two  or  three 


334     THE   EPIGRAM  AND  THE   "CHARACTER" 

years  of  this  life,  a  project  was  formed  by  which  the  countess 
was  to  sue,  on  what  could  only  have  been  false  pretences,  for 
a  divorce,  thus  to  make  a  way  for  a  marriage  with  Rochester. 
Her  father  and  uncle  were  won  over  to  this  plan,  and  King 
James    unquestionably    connived    at    the    designs    and    in- 
trigues of  his  favorite.     Overbury,  as  the  friend  and  adviser 
of  Rochester,  strongly  opposed  from  the  first  both  the  policy 
of  a  divorce  and  a  marriage  for  his  patron  with  a  woman  such 
as  Lady  Essex.     Moreover  he  had  not  been  silent  in  this  dis- 
approval;   but  had  written,  and  perhaps  circulated,  a  poem 
called  The  Wife,  published  after  his  death,  to  dissuade  Roches- 
ter from  a  step  so  ill  advised.     For  this  Lady  Essex  took  a 
terrible  revenge.     On  Overbury's  refusal  to  accept  a  foreign 
mission  which  the  king  was  induced  to  tender  him,  he  was 
committed  by  the  king's  council  to  the  Tower  for  contempt  of 
the  royal  commands  and,  after  a  number  of  abortive  practices 
against    his    life,    was    finally    poisoned    by    an    apothecary's 
assistant,   Lady  Essex's  creature,  some  ten  days  before  the 
judgment  granting  her  her  wished-for  divorce.      The  sump- 
tuous marriage  of  Lady  Essex,  Christmas  of  the  same  year, 
to  Rochester,  now  raised  to  the  earldom  of  Somerset  that  her 
ladyship  might  retain  her  rank,  and  the  trial  and  conviction, 
three  years  later,  of  the  guilty  pair  with  their  several  accessories 
for  the  murder  of  Overbury,  completed  one  of  the  blackest 
pages  in  the  annals  of  the  Stuarts.     It  was  these  events  that 
gave  a  notoriety  to  Overbury's  poem.  The  Character  of  a  Wife, 
first  published  separately  in  1614,  and  later  in  the  same  year 
with   some  twenty-nine  other  "characters"  in  prose.     In   the 
following  editions  the  number  of  characters  "by  Sir  Thomas 
Overbury  and   his  friends,"  grew   by   accretion   until,  in  the 
last  of  the   old  editions,  that  of  1638,  they  numbered  eighty, 
the  work  thus  having  grown  into  an  anthology,  so  to  speak, 
of  this  species  of  essay. 

In  such  a  collection  the  quality  is  of  course  far  from  equal. 
Overbury's  own  work  is  literary  in  its  aim  rather  than  moral. 
His  characters,  to  speak  of  them  at  large,  disclose  no  very 
deep  observation  of  individual  traits;   nor  are  they  typical  in 


THE  "CHARACTERS"  OF  OVERBURY   335 

any  such  sense  as  the  "humors"  of  Jonson  or  the  "charac- 
terisms"  of  Hall.  But  they  are  certainly  clever,  epigrammatic, 
and  both  brightly  and  quaintly  written.  Occasionally,  as  in 
"The  Good  Wife,"  "The  Happy  Milkmaid,"  or  "A  Worthy 
Commander  in  the  Wars,"  the  author  (whoever  he  was)  rises 
above  mere  smartness  to  a  touch  of  sincerity  and  even  of 
tenderness.  The  following  famous  description  is  somewhat 
condensed  to  conform  to  the  plan  of  this  book,  not  that  diffuse- 
ness  in  the  character  as  it  was  written  demands  it: 

A  fair  and  happv  milkmaid  is  a  country  wench,  that  is  so  far  from 
making  herself  beautiful  bv  art,  that  one  look  of  hers  is  able  to  put 
all  face  physic  out  of  countenance.  .  .  .  All  her  excellences  stand 
in  her  so  silently,  as  if  they  had  stolen  upon  her  without  her  knowl- 
edge. The  lining  of  her  apparel  (which  is  herself)  is  far  better  than 
outsides  of  tissue;  for  though  she  be  not  arrayed  in  the  spoil  of  the 
silk-worm,  she  is  decked  in  innocency,  a  far  better  wearing.  .  .  . 
She  rises  therefore  with  chanticleer,  her  dame's  cock,  and  at  night 
makes  lamb  her  curfew.  In  milking  a  cow  and  straining  the  teats 
through  her  fingers,  it  seems  that  so  sweet  a  milk-press  makes  the 
milk  the  whiter  or  sweeter;  for  never  came  almond  glove  or  aromatic 
ointment  off  her  palm  to  taint  it.  The  golden  ears  of  corn  fall  and 
kiss  her  feet  when  she  reaps  them,  as  if  they  wished  to  be  bound  and 
led  prisoners  by  the  same  hand  that  felled  them.  Her  breath  is  her 
own,  which  scents  all  the  year  long  of  June,  like  a  new-made  haycock. 
She  makes  her  hand  hard  with  labor,  and  soft  with  pity;  and  when 
winter's  evenings  fall  early  (sitting  at  her  merry  wheel),  she  sings  a 
defiance  to  the  giddy  wheel  of  fortune.  .  .  .  Thus  lives  she,  and  all 
her  care  is  that  she  may  die  in  the  spring-time,  to  have  store  of  flowers 
stuck  upon  her  winding-sheet. 

On  the  success  of  Overbury's  work,  the  character  became 
the  rage  of  the  moment.  Nicholas  Breton  was  earliest  in  the 
field  with  his  Characters  upon  Essays  Moral  and  Divine,  16 1 5, 
in  which  the  influence  of  Bacon's  Essays  is  acknowledged  and 
more  patent  than  the  example  of  Hall  or  Overbury.  In  1616 
appeared  The  Good  and  the  Bad  by  the  same  author.  Here  the 
characters  are  presented  in  pairs,  as  the  worthy  judge  and  the 
unworthy,  the  honest  man  and  the  knave.     These    are  true 


336     THE  EPIGRAM  AND  THE  "CHARACTER" 

characters  and  are  not  wanting  in  the  grace  and  lightness  of 
touch  that  distinguish  their  clever  and  adaptable  author. 
Through  subsequent  essays  and  characters  of  Geoffrey  Min- 
shull,  Henry  Parrot,  and  others  the  species  reached  its  height 
in  literary  excellence  and  perfection  of  form  in  John  Earle's 
Aiicrosmography  or  a  Piece  of  the  World  Characterized,  first 
printed  in  1628,  and  all  but  as  popular  in  its  time  as  Overbury's 
had  been.     But  these  latter  works  fall  beyond  our  period. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

BACON,  JURIST,  PHILOSOPHER,  AND  ESSAYIST 

MANIl'  reasons  conspire  to  give  to  Francis  Bacon  a 
position  of  peculiar  prominence  in  any  consideration 
of  English  literature.  A  notable  lawyer  under  Elizabeth, 
he  attained  to  the  woolsack  and  the  chancellorship  in  the  reign 
of  King  James.  A  philosopher  of  great,  if  questioned  repu- 
tation, an  orator  of  approved  eloquence,  an  able  historian, 
and  our  earliest  English  essayist  —  all  these  phases  of  a 
distinguished  career  must  claim  our  attention,  together  with 
the  great  intrinsic  worth  of  most  of  his  writings,  the  excellence 
and  variety  of  his  style,  the  stimulating  quality  of  his  aphor- 
isms, and  lastly,  the  mingling  of  his  name  with  Shakespeare's, 
strange  fruit  of  the  ignorance,  singularity,  and  perversity  of 
the  last  generation  and  our  own. 

Francis  Bacon  was  born  in  January,  1561,  the  son  of 
Nicholas  Bacon,  Queen  Elizabeth's  first  Lord  Keeper,  and 
his  second  wife,  Anne  Cooke,  who  was  sister  to  the  wife  of 
Lord  Burleigh,  the  famous  chancellor  of  Elizabeth.  Bacon 
passed  through  the  usual  education  of  a  gentleman  of  the  day 
at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  and  Gray's  Inn,  going  abroad 
with  an  embassy  when  but  sixteen  years  of  age,  and  finding 
himself  fatherless  with  but  small  fortune  in  1579.  Destined 
from  the  first  for  the  law,  he  was  admitted  an  utter  barrister 
in  1582;  becoming  a  member  of  Parliament  in  1584,  through 
the  interest  of  his  uncle  Burleigh,  and  two  years  later  a  bencher 
of  his  Inn.  Bacon's  mother  was  described  in  her  time  as 
"exquisitely  skilled  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  tongues";  she 
was  also  austerely  religious,  and  avowed  and  practised  a 
Puritanism  of  opinion  from  which  her  son  Francis  must 
soon  have  become  estranged.  Indeed,  his  earliest  work  is 
a  letter  of  advice  to  the  queen  in  which  he  deals  wisely  and 
moderately  with   one   of  the   most  difficult  of  her  political 

337 


338      BACON,  PHILOSOPHER  AND  ESSAYIST 

problems,  the  treatment  of  her  own  Roman  Catholic  subjects. 
In  these  early  days  Bacon  was  needy,  extravagant,  careless 
of  practical  affairs,  compelled  to  labor  at  his  profession  for 
bread,  wait  in  chargeable  attendance  at  court  for  advancement, 
in  ill  health  and  neglected  by  his  family.  As  to  Burleigh 
and  his  cousin  Cecil,  Bacon  was  assiduous  in  his  cultivation 
of  both,  and  incessant  in  seeking  through  them  for  advance- 
ment. Burleigh  could  not  have  doubted  Bacon's  abilities 
or  his  subserviency  to  the  family  interests.  He  may  have 
been  suspicious  of  his  talents  and  have  mistrusted  his  phil- 
osophic ambitions.  Burleigh  certainly  remained  unsym- 
pathic.  Cecil's  apathy  towards  the  interests  of  his  brilliant 
cousin  continued  into  the  next  reign.  But  Bacon  could  not 
be  long  in  any  assemblage  of  men  without  making  felt  the 
power  and  sublety  of  his  mind;  and  his  employment  on  public 
business  was  not  infrequent  during  the  ensuing  years,  though 
not  in  any  matters  of  great  moment  or  in  posts  of  emolument. 
jHe  was  heard  towards  the  last  of  the  long  and  violent  Mar- 
prelate  quarrel  in  an  able  paper  on  Controversies  in  the  Church 
in  which  he  opposed  alike  the  factious  temper  of  the  Puritans 
and  the  government's  unwise  rigidity  as  to  conformity./ 

About  this  time  Bacon  formed  a  warm  friendship  with 
the  Earl  of  Essex,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  of  his  age, 
highly  favored  of  the  queen,  and  apparently  destined  to  a 
career  of  power  and  splendor.  Essex  seems  to  have  been 
drawn  to  Bacon  by  a  genuine  appreciation  of  his  larger  and 
higher  ambitions;  for  Essex  was  an  intelligent  patron  of  learn- 
ing, and  an  accomplished  and  cultivated  man  himself,  pos- 
sessed of  a  generosity  of  temper  and  liberality  in  friendship 
that  account  for  his  popularity  and  the  hosts  of  his  friends. 
In  1593  the  attorney-general's  place  fell  vacant,  and  Essex, 
now  a  privy  councilor,  at  once  sought  the  post  for  Bacon. 
Bacon  was  young  for  such  advancement,  and  better  known  for 
his  pursuits  of  philosophy  and  literature  than  for  his  learning 
in  the  law.  Besides,  Sir  Edward  Coke,  nearly  ten  years  his 
senior,  already  solicitor-general  and  famed  for  his  technical 
knowledge  of  the  law,  wanted  the  post  for  himself  The 
Cecils  suggested   a   compromise,   by  which  Coke  should   be 


ELIZABETH  AND  BACON  339 

promoted  to  the  attorney-generalship  and  Bacon  become  his 
successor  as  soHcitor.  But  Essex  refused  compromise,  and 
the  queen  appointed  Coke  attorney.  Then  Essex  pressed 
for  the  soHcitorship  for  Bacon;  but  he  was  passed  over  for 
an  inferior  man.  Essex  could  do  most  things  with  the  queen, 
but  he  could  not  promote  Bacon;  and  Bacon  suffered  the 
added  mortification  of  seeing  the  rich  young  widow  of  Sir 
Christopher  Hatton,  to  whom  he  had  made  his  addresses  on 
the  advice  of  Essex,  accept  the  hand  of  Coke,  his  rival. 

Various  reasons  have  been  assigned  to  explain  why  so 
able  a  man  as  Bacon  should  not  have  received  during  the 
lifetime  of  Elizabeth  that  recognition  to  which  his  talents 
entitled  him.  One  biographer  states  that  it  was  Bacon's 
"fate  through  life  to  give  good  advice  only  to  be  rejected,  and 
yet  to  impress  those  who  received  it  with  a  sufficiently  good 
opinion  of  his  intellectual  capacity  to  gain  employment  in 
work  which  hundreds  of  others  could  have  done  as  well." 
With  Bacon  a  settlement  in  life  was  only  the  means  to  aJ 
larger  end.  In  1592,  when  thirty  years  of  age,  we  find  sure 
indications  of  the  ambitious  philosophical  designs  that  were 
to  make  him  famous.  In  one  of  his  many  letters  of  appeal 
to  Burleigh,  he  disclosed  his  hopes  and  aspirations,  declaring 
"I  have  taken  all  knowledge  to  be  my  province,"  and  this 
less  in  the  spirit  of  a  boaster  than  in  a  fervid  conviction,  born 
of  days  of  meditation  and  self-questioning.  Bacon  took  the 
world  about  him  as  it  was,  accepted  with  cynical  indifference 
its  moral  standards,  and  strove  to  thrive,  as  others  thrived,  by 
the  world's  methods.  In  the  interest  of  worldly  success  he 
enlisted  his  keen  intellect  and  his  supple  understanding;  but 
he  failed,  for  the  most  part,  to  make  men  his  counters  because 
he  neither  reached  nor  sought  to  reach  their  affections.  If 
there  was  one  thing  in  which  Queen  Elizabeth  exceeded  most 
monarchs,  it  was  in  a  certain  feminine  intuition  into  character 
that  enabled  her  to  keep  herself  surrounded  alike  by  the  ablest 
and  the  most  trustworthy  of  counselors.  Elizabeth's  tardy 
recognition  of  Bacon  is  one  of  the  evidences  of  this.  However 
willing  she  might  have  been  to  joke  with  the  clever  youth  and 
call  him  "her  little  Lord  Chancellor,"  she   must  have  felt 


340      BACON,  PHILOSOPHER  AND  ESSAYIST 

from  the  first  that  Bacon  was  an  unsafe  man;  and  it  was 
reserved  for  her  pedantic  successor  to  be  deceived  by  qualities 
of  intellectual  brilliancy,  unsupported  by  the  homelier,  safer 
virtues>that  might  well  have  misled  a  deeper  man  than  the 
author  of  A  Counterblast  to  Tobacco.  It  was  in  the  reign  of 
James  that  Bacon's  honors  crowded  upon  him;  and  it  was 
in  that  reign  that  his  memorable  fall  came. 

Essex  continued  the  friend  and  patron  of  Bacon,  impet- 
uously bestowing  an  estate  valued  at  £i%oo  upon  him,  and 
gained  for  him  at  last  the  post  of  one  of  the  queen's  counsel 
in  1596.  No  greater  contrast  could  be  conceived  than  that 
between  Essex,  ardent,  masterful,  inprudent,  and  headstrong, 
whom  the  old  queen  doted  on  and  spoiled  only  to  punish  him 
for  the  presumption  that  she  had  invited,  and  Bacon,  cool, 
intellectual,  and  subtle,  working  sinuously  and  circumspectly 
to  personal  ends,  but  stumbling  at  times  among  the  gins  and 
snares  of  that  corruption  and  intrigue  that  was  to  bring  about 
his  ultimate  fall.  Bacon  became  the  earl's  adviser  in  the 
handling  of  his  affairs,  especially  the  management  of  his 
difficult  royal  mistress,  seeking  (there  can  be  little  question) 
to  rise  in  the  rise  of  the  favorite.  Whether  an  instance  of 
the  basest  ingratitude  in  the  annals  of  history  or  one  of  those 
cases  in  which  the  law  of  self-preservation  may  be  pled  in 
extenuation  of  an  act  outrageous  in  itself,  it  is  certain  that 
when  the  difficulties  of  the  reckless  career  of  Essex  came  to 
their  logical  conclusion,  an  impeachment  for  high  treason, 
Bacon  repudiated  and  explained  away  their  intimacy,  appeared 
of  counsel  against  his  benefactor,  and  was  among  the  most 
powerful  influences  that  brought  about  the  earl's  conviction 
and  execution. 

With  the  accession  of  James,  the  lets  and  hindrances  to 
the  career  of  Bacon  were  no  more.  He  was  first  knighted, 
became  in  time  an  intimate  of  the  king,  and  rose  through  the 
place  of  king's  counsel  in  1604,  to  Keeper  of  the  Privy  Seal 
in  1617,  Lord  Chancellor  under  the  title  Lord  Verulam  in 
1619,  and  Viscount  St.  Albans  two  years  later.  Among  the 
many  trials  that  Bacon  conducted  as  Lord  Chancellor  was 
that   of  Sir   Walter   Raleigh,    the    splendid    adventurer   and 


HIS  IMPEACHMENT  AND  FALL  341 

favorite  of  Elizabeth,  who  had  long  languished  in  the  Tower 
under  the  displeasure  of  King  James.  To  Bacon,  in  his 
judicial  capacity,  Raleigh  was  no  more  than  "an  unscrupulous 
pirate  and  peculator,"  and  he  did  not  concern  himself  with 
the  circumstance  that  the  charge  was  an  old  one,  trumped 
up  to  serve  the  reestablishment  of  the  cordial  relations  be- 
tween the  King  of  England  and  the  King  of  Spain.  Into  the 
circumstances  by  which  the  enemies  of  Bacon  made  head 
against  him  and  convicted  him  of  bribery  we  need  not  enter. 
Coke  was  brutally  jubilant  among  them.  We  may  feel  sure 
that  Bacon's  conduct  in  the  case  of  Essex  was  now  remem- 
bered against  him,  not  only  by  Southampton  (who  had  been 
ruined  and  in  prison  for  years  for  his  part  in  the  rebellion 
of  Essex),  but  by  many  more.  In  a  general  movement 
against  the  abuses  and  corruption  of  the  courts.  Bacon 
was  thus  singled  out  and,  from  his  exalted  position  and 
personal  distinction,  became  the  center  of  attack.  Brought 
to  trial,  the  verdict  of  his  peers  of  the  House  of  Lords  found 
Bacon  guilty  in  all  the  charges  brought  against  him,  and 
punished  him  with  a  fine  of  ;{^40,ooo,  imprisonment  in  the 
Tower  during  the  king's  pleasure,  banishment  from  the  court, 
and  a  deprivation  of  any  right  to  serve  the  commonwealth 
in  Parliament  or  otherwise.  Southampton's  desire  that  the 
chancellor  be  degraded  from  the  peerage  was  the  only  extrem- 
ity at  which  the  verdict  paused.  And  yet  one  thing  was  even 
more  remarkable  than  this  sudden  overthrow  in  two  months' 
time  of  the  foremost  judge  of  the  realm;  this  was  Bacon's 
complete  and  servile  submission.  It  does  not  appear  when 
the  evidence  is  carefully  sifted,  as  was  not  done  in  his  time, 
that  Bacon  actually  took  bribes  for  the  perversion  of  justice. 
His  decisions  were  in  accord  with  the  evidence  and  the  law, 
but  he  fell  in  only  too  readily  with  a  system  which,  accepting 
large  gifts  from  suitors  pending  the  decision  of  their  cases, 
and  on  the  decision  of  cases  in  the  suitor's  favor,  mingled 
payment  for  services  with  gifts  of  a  questionable  nature  to 
the  intolerable  corruption  of  the  administration  of  justice. 
Bacon's  confession  that  "in  the  points  charged  upon  me, 
although  they  should  be  taken  as  myself  have  declared  them. 


342       BACON,  PHILOSOPHER  AND  ESSAYIST 

there  is  a  great  deal  of  corruption  and  neglect,  for  which  I 
am  heartily  and  penitently  sorry, "  should  be  accepted  sorrow- 
fully and  without  comment  as  conclusive,  by  all  lovers  of  the 
truth.  Bacon  survived  his  disgrace  but  four  years,  although 
the  king,  in  recognition  of  his  long  services  to  the  state,  tem- 
pered the  fine  and  penalty,  and  preserved  him  in  his  dignities, 
his  honors,  and  his  titles.  Bacon's  life  is  a  subject  on  which 
it  is  painful  to  dwell;  and  this  when  all  has  been  said  in  exten- 
uation. His  is  a  glaring  example  that  the  highest  intellectual 
gifts  are  consistent  with  self-seeking,  servility,  ingratitude, 
and  corruption.  And  it  is  no  mitigation  that  the  conduct  of 
politics  and  even  of  justice  in  his  day  were  far  from  free  of 
any  of  these  traits.  The  high-sounding  aphorisms  of  the 
Baconian  philosophy  have  in  them  ever  the  ring  of  hollowness 
and  mockery,  and  as  we  read  them  we  forget  the  learning  of 
the  chancellor  and  the  wisdom  of  the  philosopher  in  the  ser- 
vility of  the  courtier  and  the  littleness  of  meanness  rebuked. 
The  works  of  Bacon  are  conveniently  considered  in  three 
classes,  his  professional,  philosophical,  and  literary  writings. 
With  the  first  we  need  not  concern  ourselves.  None  of  them 
were  published  in  the  author's  lifetime,  although  he  prepared 
four  Arguments  of  Lazv  for  the  press.  It  is  the  opinion  of 
the  editor  of  Bacon's  professional  works  that  they  exercised 
comparatively  small  influence  on  the  progress  of  English  law. 
They  are  distinguished,  however,  like  his  other  work,  by  an 
intellectual  clearness  of  vision  beyond  his  age.  In  1605  Bacon 
published  The  Advancement  of  Learning,  which  has  been 
called  "a  careful  and  balanced  report  on  the  existing  stock 
and  deficiencies  of  human  knowledge. "  This  work  was  not 
conceived  at  first  as  a  part  of  his  Instauratio  Magna  or  Great 
Instauration  (or  Restoration),  but  was  subsequently  arranged 
to  precede  or  form  a  part  of  the  Novum  Organum.  It  was 
fifteen  years  later,  in  1620,  when  at  the  height  of  his  prosperity, 
that  Bacon  published  this  most  important  part  of  his  phil- 
osophical system,  setting  forth  "the  new  instrument  of  thought 
and  discovery,"  which  he  believed  would  prove  the  key  to 
the  command  over  nature.  But  the  intervening  years,  with 
all  his  outer  distractions,  had  been  years  of  assiduous  industry 


"THE  GREAT  INSTAURATION"  343 

and  labor  in  his  great  task.  The  rejected  projects  of  Bacon 
would  stock  a  dozen  average  men  with  ideas  for  their  combined 
lifetimes.  "Experimental  essays  and  discarded  beginnings," 
treatises,  matter  biographical  so  far  as  it  concerned  his  hopes 
and  philosophical  aspirations,  mythology  in  The  Wisdom  of 
the  Ancients  as  allegorically  shadowing  forth  later  truth,  a 
fanciful  philosophical  tale.  The  New  Atlantis  —  such  were 
some  of  the  chips  and  materials  of  experiment  that  lay  to  one 
side  in  that  busy  intellectual  workshop  in  the  center  of  which 
stood,  when  all  was  at  an  end,  the  incompleted  colossus  of 
The  Great  Instauration. 

"The  Instauratio,  as  he  planned  the  work,  is  to  be  divided," 
says  Ellis,  the  notable  editor  of  Bacon,  "into  six  portions,  of 
which  the  first  is  to  contain  a  general  survey  of  the  present 
state  of  knowledge.  In  the  second,  men  are  to  be  taught  how 
to  use  their  understanding  aright  in  the  investigation  of  nature. 
In  the  third,  all  the  phenomena  of  the  universe  are  to  be  stored 
up  in  a  treasure-house,  as  the  materials  on  which  the  new 
method  is  to  be  employed.  In  the  fourth,  examples  are  to 
be  given  of  its  operation  and  of  the  results  to  which  it  leads. 
The  fifth  is  to  contain  what  Bacon  had  accomplished  in  natural 
philosophy,  *not  however  according  to  the  true  rules  and 
methods  of  interpretation,  but  by  the  ordinary  use  of  the 
understanding  in  inquiring  and  discovering.'  It  is  therefore 
less  important  than  the  rest,  and  Bacon  declares  that  he  will 
not  bind  himself  to  the  conclusions  which  it  contains.  More- 
over, its  value  will  altogether  cease  when  the  sixth  part  can 
be  completed,  wherein  will  be  set  forth  the  new  philosophy 
—  the  result  of  the  application  of  the  new  method  to  all  the 
phenomena  of  the  universe.  But  to  complete  this,  the  last 
part  of  the  Instauratio,  Bacon  does  not  hope :  he  speaks  of 
it  as  *  a  thing  both  above  my  strength  and  beyond  my  hopes.'"  ^ 

As  we  have  it  not  only  the  Instauratio  but  the  Novum 
Organum  itself  is  only  a  fragment.  It  was  published  in  1620 
(as  we  have  seen),  and  in  Latin.    The  Advancement  of  Learning 

^Bacons  Works,  ed.  Ellis  and  Spedding,  i,  71.  The  two  quota- 
tions of  Bacon's  Latin  words,  as  quoted  by  Ellis,  I  have  transcribed 
in  the  translation  by  Spedding. 


344      BACON,  PHILOSOPHER  AND  ESSAYIST 

appeared  first  in  English.  Other  parts  of  the  Instauratio  and 
"works  on  subjects  connected  with  the  Instauratio  but  not 
intended  to  be  included  in  it,"  are  in  English  and  Latin  or, 
as  more  frequently,  only  in  Latin.  Such  are  the  Historia 
Vit(B  et  Mortis,  printed  in  1622,  often  quoted  by  Izaak  Walton; 
and  De  Digmtate  et  Augmentis  Scientiarum,  the  enlarged  and 
Latinized  version  of  The  Advancement  of  Learning.  In  1627, 
the  year  after  Bacon's  death,  appeared  Sylva  Sylvarum  or  a 
Natural  History  in  English,  a  collection  of  observations 
and  experiments  in  the  nature  of  things,  remarkably  wide  in 
its  range  and  often  accute  in  discernment,  but  hopelessly 
antiquated  long  since  not  only  to  the  physicist  but  to  the  average 
man.  How  impossible  it  is  for  even  the  sagest  of  men  to 
escape  his  age  is  discernible  in  such  a  passage  as  this: 

There  is  a  stone  which  they  call  the  blood-stone,  which  worn, 
is  thought  to  be  good  for  them  that  bleed  at  the  nose :  which  (no  doubt) 
is  by  astriction  and  cooling  of  the  spirits.  Qucere,  if  the  stone  taken 
out  of  the  toad's  head  be  not  of  the  like  virtue;  for  the  toad  loveth 
shade  and  coolness. 

Elsewhere  Bacon  recounts,  with  apparent  acceptance  and 
approval,  that  "the  heart  of  an  ape,  worn  near  the  heart, 
comforteth  the  heart  and  increaseth  audacity. "  But  surely 
he  who  in  Jonson's  words  could  not  "spare  or  pass  a  jest," 
is  less  the  philosopher  than  the  wit  when  he  adds:  "It  may 
be  the  heart  of  a  man  would  do  more,  but  that  it  is  more 
against  men's  minds  to  use  it;  except  it  be  in  such  as  wear 
the  relics  of  saints. " 

Many  an  educated  man,  asked  who  was  Francis  Bacon, 
might  describe  him  as  the  inventor  of  philosophic  induction. 
This  is  of  course  absurd.  The  method  of  scientific  inquiry 
in  the  Middle  Ages  was  deductive,  that  is,  the  generalization 
was  applied  to  the  particular  case.  This  method  is  apt  to 
result  in  an  examination  of  only  those  facts  which  are  pre- 
viously supposed  to  be  likely  to  sustain  a  preconceived  theory 
or  opinion,  or  at  least  to  waste  much  time  in  ingeniously 
devised  syllogisms,  arguments,  and  explanations  without  a 
sufficient  critical  examination  of  the  premises  on  which  they 


THE  BACONIAN  INDUCTION  345 

may  be  founded.  It  was  to  right  this  that  Bacon  wrote  the 
Novum  Organum.  And  the  method  he  advocated  was  that 
of  inductive  logic,  the  procedure  of  which  was  generalization 
with  the  purpose  of  establishing  the  principle  only  after  an 
exhaustive  gathering  and  consideration  of  the  particular  facts 
involved.  It  was  a  "systematic  analysis  and  arrangement  of 
inductive  evidence,  as  distinct  from  the  natural  deduction 
which  all  men  practise"  that  Bacon  proposed;  in  his  own 
happy  illustration: 

The  men  of  experiment  are  like  the  ant;  they  only  collect  and  use: 
the  reasoners  resemble  spiders,  who  make  cobwebs  out  of  their  own 
substance.  But  the  bee  takes  a  middle  course;  it  gathers  its  material 
from  the  flowers  of  the  garden  and  of  the  field,  but  transforms  and 
digests  it  by  a  power  of  its  own.  Not  unlike  this  is  the  true  business 
of  philosophy;  for  it  neither  relies  solely  or  chiefly  on  the  powers  of 
the  mind,  nor  does  it  take  the  matter  which  it  gathers  from  natural 
history  and  mechanical  experiments  and  lay  it  up  in  the  memory 
whole,  as  it  finds  it;  but  lays  it  up  in  the  understanding  altered  and 
digested. 

Bacon's  noble,  if  somewhat  utilitarian,  ideal,  thus,  of  the  office 
of  philosophy  was  its  mastery  of  the  secrets  of  nature  "to 
extend  more  widely  the  limits  of  the  power  and  greatness 
of  man. "  Bacon's  criticism  of  past  error  was  just  and  needful, 
his  separation  of  science  from  religion  valuable  in  itself  and 
for  its  consequences;  his  enlistment  of  physical  experiment  in 
application  for  the  benefit  of  mankind  most  suggestive  and  in 
time  fruitful.  But  we  learn  with  amazement  that  this  great 
and  novel  philosophy  rejected  the  Copernican  system  of 
astronomy,  held  mathematics  in  undisguised  contempt,  and 
yet  disdained  not  to  discuss  and  accept  current  fallacies  of 
popular  lore  such  as  the  trivialities  quoted  above,  some  of 
them  as  old  as  Pliny's  Natural  History  and  disprovable  by 
far  less  cumbrous  methods  than  those  of  inductive  logic. 

In  short  the  position  of  Bacon  as  a  philosopher  is  by  no 
means  the  assured  one  that  ignorance  is  apt  to  suppose  it. 
His  place  at  the  dawn  of  modern  science  was  that  of  one  who 
points   the   true   direction  though   he   follow  it  not  himself/^' 
Bacon  was  not  a  partaker  in  any  actual  scientific  discovery 


346       BACON,  PHILOSOPHER  AND  ESSAYIST 

of  his  day,  nor  a  leader  to  any  discovery  that  came  after.  He 
was  not  even  in  sympathy  with  the  science  of  his  time.  For 
he  disparaged  Copernicus  and  criticized  adversely  Gilbert's 
treatise  On  the  Magnet.  While  Bacon  was  condemning 
all  investigation  into  final  causes,  Harvey  completed  his 
deductions  as  to  the  circulation  of  the  blood;  while  Bacon  was 
questioning  the  advantage  of  any  use  of  optical  instruments, 
Galileo  was  scanning  the  heavens  with  his  telescope  and  adding 
star  to  star.  Moreover,  as  to  the  Baconian  system,  practical 
workers,  like  the  anatomist  Harvey,  like  Liebig  the  chemist,  or 
Bernard  the  physiologist,  "say  that  they  can  find  nothing  to 
help  them  in  Bacon's  method."  And  Spedding,  most  appre- 
ciative of  the  editors  of  Bacon,  declares:  "Of  this  philosophy 
we  can  make  nothing  ....  We  regard  it  as  a  curious 
piece  of  machinery,  very  subtle,  elaborate  and  ingenious,  but 
not  worth  constructing,  because  all  the  work  it  could  do  may 
be  done  another  way."  Induction  is  not  a  method  fruitful 
in  results.  However  valuable  Bacon's  philosophical  works 
may  be  in  inspiration,  for  any  value  as  an  instrument  or 
practical  method  of  work  —  much  less  one  that  was  to  revolu- 
tionize the  intellectual  processes  of  mankind  —  this  gigantic 
project  must  be  pronounced  a  failure. 

Of  the  literary  work  of  Bacon  the  chief  is  the  well-known 
Essays  or  Counsels  Civil  and  Moral.  This  famous  book 
appeared  first  in  a  very  small  octavo  volume,  in  1597,  with 
the  title.  Essays,  Religious  Meditations,  Places  of  Persuasion 
and  Dissuasion.  The  two  latter  items  of  this  three-fold 
title  refer  to  two  other  works,  Meditationes  Sacra;  in  Latin,  and 
Of  the  Colors  of  Good  and  Evil,  a  fragment  in  English.  Neither 
was  afterwards  reprinted  with  the  Essays;  and  the  Essays 
themselves  were  but  ten  in  number.  It  is  of  interest,  in  view 
of  the  man  that  Bacon  planned  to  be  and  inevitably  became, 
that  the  topics  of  these  earliest  essays  should  have  been  of 
study,  discourse,  ceremonies  and  respect,  followers  and  friends; 
of  suitors,  expense;  regiment  of  health,  of  honor  and  reputa- 
tion, of  faction,  and  of  negotiating.  The  work  was  immedi- 
ately recognized  and,  like  most  popular  Elizabethan  books, 
soon  pirated.      In   1612   Bacon  himself  brought  out  a  new 


THE  "ESSAYS"  347 

edition,  enlarged  to  thirty-eight  essays  under  the  simpler 
title,  The  Essays  of  Sir  Francis  Bacon;  and  in  1 625  The 
Essays  or  Counsels  Civil  and  Moral  of  Francis  Lord  Ferulam, 
now  augmented  to  fifty-eight  in  number,  represents  the  final 
state  of  the  work.  From  the  epistle  of  the  first  edition,  dedica- 
ted to  his  brother,  Anthony  Bacon,  it  appears  that  the  nucleus 
of  the  ten  original  essays  had  "passed  long  ago  from  my  pen," 
that  is,  were  written  at  a  time  well  prior  to  their  publication 
in  1597.  It  also  appears  that  they  were  printed  by  the  author 
to  stay  unauthorized  publication;  for  such  seems  the  meaning 
of  the  words:  "I  do  now  like  some  that  have  an  orchard 
ill-neighbored,  that  gather  their  fruit  before  it  is  ripe  to  pre- 
vent stealing."  In  a  later  dedication  to  Prince  Henry,  sup- 
pressed however  owing  to  his  death.  Bacon  speaks  of  his 
purpose:  "The  want  of  leisure  hath  made  me  choose  to 
write  certain  brief  notes,  set  down  rather  significantly  than 
curiously  which  I  have  called  essays.  The  word,"  he  con- 
tinues, "is  late,  but  the  thing  is  ancient.  For  Seneca's  Epis- 
tles to  Lucilius,  if  one  mark  them  well,  are  but  essays,  that  is 
dispersed  meditations,  though  conveyed  in  the  form  of  epis- 
tles."  That  Bacon  had  another  besides  this  ancient  model 
is  not  to  be  questioned,  although  he  quotes  Montaigne  but 
once.  The  Essais  of  Michel  de  Montaigne  had  appeared 
first  in  1580,  and  by  the  time  that  Bacon  wrote  had  reached 
at  least  a  dozen  editions  in  France.  His  title  —  essay,  attempt, 
endeavor,  modest  enough  in  its  day  —  Bacon  had,  beyond 
doubt,  of  Montaigne.  Except  for  this  and  the  genius  of 
both,  there  is  little  in  common  between  the  two  authors;  for 
the  gossipy  self-portrayal  of  the  French  epicurean  is- at  the 
opposite  pole  to  the  worldly  wisdom,  the  abstract  philosophy, 
and  the  glittering  apothegm  of  the  English  lawyer. 

The  first  things  that  strike  the  reader  of  Bacon's  Essays 
are  their  brilliancy,  their  polish,  and  their  disconnectedness. 
As  we  read  further,  we  appreciate  more  fully  their  practical 
sagacity,  their  wealth  of  pertinent  illustration  and  quotation 
(after  the  manner  of  the  time),  and  their  extreme  condensity, 
both  of  thought  and  of  expression.  The  subjects  of  these 
Essays  are,  for  the  most  part,  abstractions, —  truth,  love,  am- 


348      BACON,  PHILOSOPHER  AND  ESSAYIST 

bition,  vainglory;  but  some  relate  to  social  and  human  rela- 
tions, as  parents  and  children,  and  the  essay  on  marriage, 
and  more  to  politics,  social  conditions,  and  conduct  in  life. 
Not  least  interesting  are  they  at  large  in  that  they  reveal  the 
man  habituated  to  thought  on  all  things,  now  great  v^ith  the 
larger  issues  of  human  existence,  again  minutely  particular 
in  the  minor  things  and  even  the  trivialities  of  life.  Of  subject- 
matter  less  momentous  are  the  essays  "of  Building,"  "of 
Masques  and  Triumphs,"  "of  the  Regiment  of  Health,"  and 
the  delightful  paragraphs  "of  Plantations, "  and  "of  Gardens." 
While  partaking  largely  of  the  quaintness  which,  to  us  at 
least,  seems  a  pervasive  quality  of  Elizabethan  literature, 
Bacon's  is  a  remarkably  modern  tone,  and  his  short,  crisp 
sentences  and  sureness  of  statement  enhance  his  modernness 
of  diction.  Bacon's  analogy  and  illustration  is  exhaustless, 
and  he  shines  at  times  with  the  brilliancy  of  epigram  and  the 
gorgeousness  of  a  magnificently  rhetorical  imagination.  But 
however  prismatic  the  colors,  Bacon  is  absolutely  devoid  of 
any  warmth  of  passion.  Such  a  man  must  have  been  a  great 
orator  from  the  power  of  his  mind,  if  not  from  the  eloquence 
of  his  heart.  And  we  read  for  the  first  time,  with  positive 
expectation  that  it  is  to  be  found  somewhere,  the  celebrated 
passage  of  Ben  Jonson  as  to  the  eloquence  of  the  Lord  Chan- 
cellor: 

There  happened  in  my  time  one  noble  speaker  who  was  full  of 
gravity  in  his  speaking;  his  language,  when  he  could  spare  or  pass  a 
jest,  was  nobly  censorious.  No  man  ever  spake  more  neatly,  more 
pressly,  more  weightily,  or  suffered  less  emptiness,  less  idleness,  in 
what  he  uttered.  No  member  of  his  speech  but  consisted  of  his  own 
graces.  His  hearers  could  not  cough  or  look  aside  from  him  without 
loss.  He  commanded  where  he  spoke,  and  had  his  judges  [i.  e.  those 
before  whom  he  was  pleading]  angry  and  pleased  at  his  devotion. 
No  man  had  their  affections  [i.  e.  emotions]  more  in  his  power.  The 
fear  of  every  man  who  heard  him  was  lest  he  should  make  an  end. 

Returning  for  a  moment  to  the  style  of  the  Essays,  sen- 
tentiousness,  condensity,  and  pregnancy  of  thought  have 
seldom  been  carried  to  such  a  degree.  And  these  things  were 
compassed,  as  we  know  by  reference  to  the  successive  versions. 


THE  "ESSAYS"  349 

only  by  the  most  assiduous  and  painstaking  revision.  Indeed, 
outside  of  the  pages  of  the  great  Roman  historian,  Tacitus, 
it  may  be  doubted  if  a  more  complete  success  has  ever  been 
attained  in  a  like  terse  and  difficult  style.  Yet  it  is  a  mistake 
to  think  of  Bacon  as  a  man  possessed  of  a  single  literary  style, 
however  excellent.  The  Advancement  of  Learning  exhibits 
the  philosopher's  evidences  of  design,  and  the  whole  treatise 
is  written  with  the  continuity  and  copious  flow  which  is  suit- 
able to  so  stately  a  topic.  In  The  History  of  Henry  VH, 
and  especially  in  the  interesting  fragment,  The  New  Atlantis, 
the  narrative  is  handled  with  a  directness  and  steady  progress 
that  must  surprise  the  reader  who  knows  his  Bacon,  as  too 
many  of  us  do,  only  by  the  Essays. 

So  as  marvel  you  not  at  the  thin  population  of  America,  nor  at 
the  rudeness  and  ignorance  of  the  people;  for  you  must  account  your 
inhabitants  of  America  as  a  young  people;  younger  a  thousand  years, 
at  the  least,  than  the  rest  of  the  world;  for  there  was  so  much  time 
between  the  universal  flood  and  their  particular  inundation.  For 
the  poor  remnant  of  human  seed  which  remained  in  their  mountains 
peopled  the  country  again  slowly,  by  little  and  little;  and  being  a 
simple  and  savage  people,  (not  like  Noah  and  his  sons,  which  was  the 
chief  family  of  the  earth),  they  were  not  able  to  leave  letters,  arts, 
and  civility  to  their  posterity. 

Very  different  in  style  and  structure  are  the  familiar  words: 

Read  not  to  contradict,  nor  to  believe,  but  to  weigh  and  consider. 
Some  books  are  to  be  tasted,  others  to  be  swallowed,  and  some  few 
to  be  chewed  and  digested:  that  is,  some  books  are  to  be  read  only 
in  parts;  others  to  be  read,  but  cursorily,  and  some  few  to  be  read 
wholly  and  with  diligence.  Reading  maketh  a  full  man,  conference 
a  ready  man,  and  writing  an  exact  man. 

And  yet  with  all  this  literary  excellence,  and  with  a  reputa- 
tion to  endure  while  English  literature  shall  last,  few  great 
men  have  so  little  deserved  a  place  of  literary  eminence  by 
their  own  act.  Bacon,  unlike  many  of  his  great  contempo- 
raries —  Sidney,  Spenser,  Raleigh,  Hooker,  and  Jonson  —  held 
his  mother  tongue  in  undisguised  contempt,  and  spent  much 
time   in   translating   his   works   into   Latin   that   they   might 


350       BACON,  PHILOSOPHER  AND   ESSAYIST 

endure  to  posterity.     In  his  own  words,  often  quoted,  from  a 
letter  to  his  friend,  Sir  Toby  Matthew: 

My  labors  are  now  most  set  to  have  those  works,  which  I  have 
formerly  published,  as  that  of  Advancement  of  Learning,  that  of 
Henry  VII ,  that  of  the  Essays,  being  retractate  and  made  more 
perfect,  well  translated  into  Latin  by  the  help  of  some  good  pens 
which  forsake  me  not.  For  these  modern  languages  will  at  one  time 
or  other  play  the  bankrupts  with  books:  and  since  I  have  lost  much 
time  with  this  age,  I  would  be  glad,  as  God  shall  give  me  leave,  to 
recover  it  with  posterity. 

Bacon  was,  in  all  probability,  insensible  of  the  glorious  wealth 
of  literature  that  was  springing  up  around  him;  or  if  sensible, 
too  pusillanimous  to  trust  his  fame  in  the  same  vehicle  with 
that  of  low-born  playwrights  and  Bohemian  pamphleteers. 
He  preferred  the  passionless  rhetoric  of  a  dead  tongue  to  this 
living  carriage  of  animate  speech;  and  as  a  penance,  much  of 
his  work  lies  as  in  the  tomb,  the  resort  of  the  enthusiastic 
metaphysician  or  the  curious  historian  of  speculative  thought. 
It  would  ill  have  become  the  philosopher  who  "took  all 
learning  for  his  province"  to  have  remained  wholly  uncon- 
versant  with  the  poetical  and  the  theatrical  activities  of  his 
age.  And  despite  the  Baconian  insensibility  noticed  above, 
of  these  "toys,"  too,  the  great  man  took  a  condescending 
cognisance.  As  early  as  1587  we  find  Bacon  one  of  some  half- 
dozen  young  gentlemen,  members  of  Gray's  Inn,  engaged  in 
devising  dumb  shows  (such  as  those  in  Gorhoduc)  for  '^Certain 
Devices,'^  acted  before  her  majesty.  In  1592  Bacon  wrote 
"speeches"  for  a  device  presented  to  the  queen  when  enter- 
tained by  Essex,  Bacon  also  contributed  similarly  to  the 
Gesta  Grayorum  in  the  protracted  festivities  of  his  Inn,  in 
1595.  Far  later,  in  1613,  on  the  occasion  of  the  celebrations 
incident  to  the  marriage  of  the  king's  daughter  Elizabeth 
to  the  Prince  Palatine,  Bacon  is  described  as  "the  chief  con- 
triver" of  Beaumont's  excellent  masque.  Lastly,  in  the  fol- 
lowing year.  Bacon  was  designated,  "the  chief  encourager" 
of  the  anonymous  Masque  of  Flowers,  on  which  he  is  said 
to  have  expended  no  less  than  ;{^2,ooo.  Yet  if  we  would  know 
Bacon's  attitude  as  to  these  matters,  we  must  turn  to  the  well- 


TRAFFIC  WITH  THE  STAGE  351 

known   essay,  "of  Masques  and  Triumphs."      There   it  is 
that  he  writes: 

These  things  are  but  toys  to  come  amongst  such  serious  observa- 
tions. But  yet  since  princes  will  have  such  things,  it  is  better  they 
should  be  graced  with  elegancy  than  daubed  with  cost.  Dancing 
to  song  is  a  thing  of  great  state  and  pleasure.  .  .  .  Acting  in  song, 
especially  in  dialogues,  hath  an  extreme  good  grace:  I  say  acting, 
not  dancing,  for  that  is  a  mean  and  vulgar  thing.  And  the  voices 
of  the  dialogue  would  be  strong  and  manly:  a  base,  and  a  tenor,  no 
treble;  and  the  ditty  high  and  tragical,  not  nice  or  dainty.  Several 
choirs,  placed  one  over  against  another,  and  taking  the  voice  by 
catches,  anthem-wise,  give  great  pleasure.  Turning  dances  into  figure 
is  a  childish  curiosity.  And  generally  let  it  be  noted  that  those  things, 
which  I  here  set  down,  are  such  as  do  naturally  take  the  sense  and  not 
respect  petty  wonderments.  It  is  true,  the  alterations  of  scenes,  so 
it  be  quietly  and  without  noise,  are  things  of  great  beauty  and  pleasure: 
for  they  feed  and  relieve  the  eye  before  it  be  full  of  the  same  object. 
Let  the  scenes  abound  with  light,  especially  colored  and  varied,  and 
let  the  masquers  or  any  other  that  are  to  come  down  from  the  scene, 
have  some  motions,  upon  the  scene  itself  before  their  coming  down: 
for  it  draws  the  eye  strangely  and  makes  it  with  great  pleasure  to 
desire  to  see  that  it  can  not  perfectly  discern. 

And  after  another  page  of  this  patronizing,  he  abruptly 
breaks  off:  "But  enough  of  these  toys."  Elsewhere  Bacon 
speaks  with  similar  disdain  of  "the  transcendence  of  poesy"; 
advises  that  we  "leave  the  goodly  fabrics  of  houses  for  beauty 
only,  to  the  enchanted  palaces  of  the  poets;  who,"  he  adds, 
"build  them  with  small  cost";  and  quotes  with  approval 
St.  Jerome's  designation  of  poetry  as  vinum  daemonum 
(/.  ^.  wine  of  devils)  "because  it  filleth  the  imagination  . 
but  with  the  shadow  of  a  lie. " 

The  late  Dr.  Grosart,  an  indefatigable  editor  and  gleaner 
in  the  well-reaped  fields  of  our  old  literature,  has  collected 
"The  Poems  of  Francis  Bacon."  The  collection  includes 
The  Translation  of  Certain  Psalms,  six  or  seven  in  number, 
which  curiously  enough  his  lordship  published  himself,  in 
1625,  with  a  dedication  to  George  Herbert;  and  two  other 
pieces.  As  to  the  psalms.  Bacon  translated  them,  as  who  did 
not  in  that  age  from  Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  Queen  Elizabeth 


352      BACON,  PHILOSOPHER  AND  ESSAYIST 

herself,  to  Bishop  Parker,  and  Sternhold  and  Hopkins  ?  As  to 
their  merit  as  poetry,  Spedding  remarks:  "An  unpractised 
versifier  who  will  not  take  time  and  trouble  about  the  work, 
must  of  course  leave  many  bad  verses:  for  poetic  feeling  and 
imagination,  though  they  will  dislike  a  wrong  word,  will  not 
of  themselves  suggest  a  right  one  that  will  suit  meter  and 
rime :  and  it  would  be  easy  to  quote  from  the  few  pages  that 
follow  not  only  many  bad  lines,  but  many  poor  stanzas. " 
Dr.  Grosart,  on  the  other  hand,  whose  enthusiasm  for  the 
particular  author  that  he  happened  at  the  moment  to  be  editing 
commonly  outstripped  his  judgment,  declares  himself  able 
to  make  "fresh  discoveries  of  beauty,  ineffable  scintillations 
of  true  'Promethean  heat'  "  in  these  psalms,  whenever  he 
"returns"  to  them.  Of  the  other  two  poems,  one  beginning: 
The  man  of  life  upright  whose  guiltless  heart  is  free 
From  all  dishonest  deeds  and  thoughts  of  vanity, 

is  attributed  by  somebody  to  Bacon  in  the  manuscript  in 
which  it  occurs,  and  is  verily  such  "as  might  very  well  have 
been  written  by  Bacon,  or  by  a  hundred  other  people." 
Lastly,  "the  expansion  of  a  Greek  epigram,"  as  the  remaining 
"poem"  attributed  to  Bacon  is  entitled,  is  a  production  calling 
for  more  attention.  It  is  superior  in  workmanship  to  any 
of  his  psalms,  and  it  is  less  a  translation,  or  even  a  paraphrase, 
of  its  original  (an  epigram  from  the  Florilegium,  attributed  to 
Poseidippus),  than  a  new  poem  on  the  suggested  theme. 
These  lines  run  as  follows: 

The  world  's  a  bubble,  and  the  life  of  man 
Less  than  a  span; 

In  his  conception  wretched,  from  the  womb, 
So  to  the  tomb; 

Cursed  from  his  cradle  and  brought  up  to  years 
With  cares  and  fears: 

Who  then  to  frail  mortality  shall  trust, 

But  limns  on  water  or  but  writes  in  dust  ? 

Yet,  whilst  with  sorrow  here  we  live  opprest. 

What  life  is  best  ? 
Courts  are  but  only  superficial  schools 

To  dandle  fools; 


BACON  AND  POETRY  353 

The  rural  part  is  turned  into  a  den 

Of  savage  men; 
And  where  's  a  city  from  foul  vice  so  free 
But  may  be  termed  the  worst  of  all  the  three  ? 

Domestic  cares  afflict  the  husband's  bed, 

Or  pains  his  head: 
Those  that  live  single  take  it  for  a  curse, 

Or  do  things  worse; 
These  would  have  children;  those  that  have  them  moan 

Or  wish  them  gone: 
What  is  it,  then,  to  have  or  have  no  wife, 
But  single  thraldom  or  a  double  strife  ? 

Our  own  affections  still  at  home  to  please 

Is  a  disease; 
To  cross  the  seas  to  any  foreign  soil. 

Peril  and  toil; 
Wars  with  their  noise  affright  us,  when  they  cease, 

We  are  worse  in  peace: 
What  then  remains,  but  that  we  still  should  cry 
For  being  born,  or,  being  born,  to  die  ? 

From  this  repellent  piece  of  pessimism,  with  its  precision  of 
thought  and  polish  of  style,  let  us  turn  where  we  will  to  Shake- 
speare: 

Let  me  not  to  the  marriage  of  true  minds 

Admit  impediments.     Love  is  not  love 

Which  alters  when  it  alteration  finds, 

Or  bends  with  the  remover  to  remove: 

O,  no!    it  is  an  ever-fixed  mark 

That  looks  on  tempests  and  is  never  shaken; 

It  is  the  star  to  every  wandering  bark. 

Whose  worth  's  unknown,  although  his  height  be  taken; 

Love  's  not  Time's  fool,  though  rosy  lips  and  cheeks 

Within  his  bending  sickle's  compass  come; 

Love  alters  not  with  his  brief  hours  or  weeks, 

But  bears  it  out  even  to  the  edge  of  doom: 

If  this  be  error  and  upon  me  proved, 

I  never  writ  nor  no  man  ever  loved. 


354       BACON,  PHILOSOPHER  AND   ESSAYIST 

Here  is  wisdom,  the  wisdom  of  the  seer,  not  of  the  logician; 
here  is  beauty  of  thought  and  lovehness  of  poetic  form;  thought 
poetical,  not  epigrammatic;  form  in  those  free  lines  that  mark 
the  sure  stroke  of  artistic  mastery,  as  opposed  to  the  thought 
of  the  admirably  clear,  cool,  and  subtle  mind  that  is  the  anti- 
thesis of  the  poet.  The  epigram,  quoted  above,  is  certainly 
Bacon's,  not  only  for  the  contemporary  evidence  but  for  its 
Baconian  spirit  of  worldliness  and  its  hard-eyed  recognition 
of  the  vanity  and  futility  of  such  a  life  as  was  his.  But  it  is 
little  to  found  the  reputation  of  a  poet  on.  Indeed,  Bacon's 
touch  with  poetry  is  scarcely  more  serious  than  his  momentary 
points  of  contact  with  the  drama. 

If  we  dare  emulate  for  the  moment  the  rhapsodical  art 
of  the  late  Mr.  Swinburne,  among  the  many  vagaries  and 
wanderings  into  darkness  that  egotistic  singularity  has  begot- 
ten on  crass  ignorance  none  could  be  more  unfortunate  than 
any  confusion  of  the  lives,  the  characters,  or  the  works  of 
Francis  Bacon  with  William  Shakespeare.  For,  ransack 
Elizabethan  England  how  we  will,  it  would  be  impossible  to 
find  two  minds  of  conspicuous  prominence  more  radically 
different  in  their  natures,  their  modes  of  thinking,  and  quality 
of  achievement  than  were  the  minds  of  these  two  great  men. 
The  man,  whatever  his  name,  who  wrote  the  plays  which 
still  issue  under  the  name  of  Shakespeare  in  thousands  of 
impressions  yearly,  was  country  born  and  acquainted  with 
rural  sports:  moreover  he  possessed  a  knowledge  of  such 
things  that  came  by  nature.  Again,  he  was  a  man  absolutely 
fr«e  from  the  slightest  suspicion  of  bookishness  and  pedantry, 
a  man  of  "small  Latin  and  less  Greek."  In  the  third  place, 
the  man  that  wrote  the  Shakespearean  plays  was  one  intimately 
conversant  with  the  theater;  not  merely  to  the  degree  of  assist- 
ing in  the  preparation  of  one  or  two  masques  for  the  enter- 
tainment of  her  majesty,  but  to  the  extent  of  many  years  of 
actual  service,  involving  the  ordeal  of  a  rigid  apprenticeship, 
the  revision  and  refashioning  of  old  work,  the  treading  the 
boards  as  an  actor,  and  that  feeling  of  the  pulse  of  the  public 
which  the  clever  manager  learns  to  interpret  with  unfailing 
success.     Lastly,  the  writer  of  these  plays  was  a  poet;  a  man 


BACON  AND  SHAKESPEARE  355 

of  lavish  and  exuberant  imagination,  pregnant  with  wisdom 
and  illumined  with  the  purest  vein  of  humor  known  to  lit- 
erature. To  country  breeding,  the  absence  of  all  that  makes 
the  bookish  man,  an  intimate  conversancy  with  the  public 
stage,  and  the  qualities  that  combine  to  make  the  most  con- 
summate of  poets  and  dramatists,  might  be  added  many  other 
characteristics  which  all  would  agree  must  have  animated 
the  heart  and  brain  of  the  author  of  these  plays:  his  universal 
sympathy  and  charity,  his  lofty  ethics,  his  deep  and  noble 
philosophy  of  life  —  but  enough  has  been  written. 

Now,  in  view  of  all  this,  what  sort  of  a  man  was  Francis 
Bacon  ?  City  born  and  courtly  bred,  with  an  ideal  of  a  trim 
clipped  garden  as  "the  greatest  refreshment  to  the  spirit  of 
man,"  with  a  knowledge  of  herbs  and  flowers,  extensive  (as 
was  all  his  knowledge)  and  pedantically  scientific  (as  was 
much  of  it).  As  to  his  acquaintance  with  contemporary 
drama,  Spedding  declared  that  in  all  his  study  of  Bacon  he 
had  never  seen  any  sign  that  the  philosopher  had  ever  read 
a  line  of  Shakespeare.  A  time-server  and  a  trimmer,  whom 
the  wise  Queen  Elizabeth  mistrusted  and  the  unwise  King 
James  advanced;  a  scholar  and  an  author  distinguished  for 
his  English  prose,  yet  one,  as  we  have  seen,  who  feared  lest 
his  mother-tongue  might  prove  a  bankrupt,  as  he  put  it,  and 
therefore  entrusted  the  precious  freight  of  his  philosophy  to- 
Latin;  a  philosopher  who  sought  to  revolutionize  the  processes 
of  human  thought  but  rejected  some  of  the  most  important 
scientific  discoveries  of  his  own  time;  a  jurist,  the  most 
eminent  of  his  day,  self-convicted  of  corruption. 

It  is  possible  to  treat  with  respect  and  accept  so  far  as  the 
evidences  appeal  to  reason,  the  scholars'  proofs  that  parts 
of  Shakespeare  as  printed  to-day  are  not  his;  that  Fletcher's 
hand  is  discernable  in  Henry  VIII,  and  that  other  inferior 
authors  may  have  penned  portions  of  other  plays.  The 
influence  of  Lyly  is  patent  in  the  earliest  comedies,  and  Mar- 
lowe's is  as  unmistakeable  in  the  earlier  historical  dramas. 
Conceivable  —  although  the  present  writer  could  not  share 
it  —  is  a  fancy  that  Ben  Jonson  transcended  himself  in  the 
writing  of  parts  of  Julius  Ccesar;  or  that  Spenser  miraculously 


356      BACON,  PHILOSOPHER  AND  ESSAYIST 

wrote  some  passage  or  other  of  these  plays,  showing  himself 
for  the  first  and  only  time  in  his  life  a  dramatist.  But  of 
all  the  men  of  Elizabeth's  reign,  great  and  little,  gentle  or 
common,  poets  or  none,  there  is  not  one  so  infinitely  removed, 
so  absolutely  alien,  in  character,  spirit,  and  nature,  in  qualities 
of  mind  and  of  heart  from  the  author  of  Shakespeare's  plays 
as  Francis  Bacon.  The  man  who  wrote  the  Shakespearean 
dramas  was  one  whose  birth,  and  extraction,  whose  education, 
training,  and  experience  in  life  were  the  precise  counterpart 
of  the  little  that  we  know  and  the  more  that  we  may  with 
reason  infer  to  have  been  Shakespeare's.  These  plays  are 
Shakespeare's  very  own;  and  least  of  all  things  conceivable 
is  the  preposterous  notion  that  they  could  in  any  part  or  parcel 
have  been  written  by  such  a  man  as  Bacon. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

DONNE  AND  HIS  PLACE  AMONG  LYRICAL 
POETS 

WE  know  more  of  the  outward  events  of  the  life  of  John 
Donne  than  of  any  poet  or  writer  of  his  age,  and  yet 
he  remains  a  personage  strange  and  enigmatic,  and  a  poet 
more  often  misjudged  than  appreciated.  Donne's  was  a 
twofold  greatness.  A  biographer,  not  long  since,  wrote  a 
Life  of  Donne  in  which  he  confesses  to  little  sympathy  with 
his  poetry.^  He  was  writing  of  the  famous  Dean  of  St.  Paul's, 
amongst  the  most  learned  of  divines  in  an  age  of  deep  theolo- 
gical learning,  the  most  brilliant  and  persuasive  preacher  of 
his  day.  Of  Donne  as  a  divine  we  have  already  heard  in 
this  book.  But  Donne  would  remain  great  in  the  history  of 
literature  with  the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's  neglected,  in  that  he  is 
the  most  original,  the  most  independent,  the  most  perverse, 
yet  in  some  respects  among  the  most  illuminated  of  the  poets 
of  the  latter  days  of  Elizabeth.  Nor  is  it  possible  to  separate 
wholly  these  two  aspects  of  Donne's  career;  for  although  there 
is  little  of  the  future  divine  in  those  strange  and  cynical  erotic 
poems  which  formed  so  interesting  a  part  of  the  exercises  of 
his  youth,  still  his  poetry  would  be  far  from  what  it  is  to  us 
were  the  spirituality  of  his  later  poems  not  to  enter  into  account. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  is  the  power  of  poetry  in  the  divine  as 
well  as  the  beauty  and  sanctity  of  his  life  that  endeared  him 
to  those  whose  privilege  it  was  to  know  him,  and  made  him 
a  power  for  good  in  his  day. 

John  Donne  was  born  in  London  in  1573,  the  year  of 
Jonson's  birth.  His  father,  also  John  Donne,  was  Master 
of  the  Ironmongers'  Company  and  a  man  of  wealth  and  prom- 
inence. His  mother  was  Elizabeth  Heywood,  daughter  of 
John  Heywood,  the  famous  epigrammatist  and  writer  of 
interludes  in  the  days  of  Henry  VIII.     Both  families  were 

*  John  Donne,  Sometime  Dean  of  St.  PauFs,  by  A.  Jessopp,  1897. 

357 


K 


3S8         DONNE  AND  THE  LYRICAL  POETS 

stanch  Roman  Catholics;  and  they  remained  such,  and 
suffered  for  their  faith.  Donne's  education  was  superintended 
by  his  uncle,  Jasper  Heywood,  a  Jesuit  of  prominence  and 
translator,  with  others,  of  Seneca's  tragedies.  In  order  to 
escape  the  difficulties  of  taking  the  oath  of  allegiance  (which 
was  made  particularly  offensive  to  them),  it  was  the  custom 
for  Roman  Catholic  boys  to  go  up  to  college  very  young;  for 
the  oath  was  not  exacted  of  any  under  the  age  of  sixteen. 
Donne  and  his  brother,  Henry,  matriculated  at  Oxford  when 
twelve  and  eleven  years  of  age,  John  leaving  when  less  than 
fourteen.  There  he  formed  a  warm  friendship  with  Sir 
Henry  Wotton,  which  lasted  through  life.  Both  left  Oxford, 
however,  without  a  degree,  and  Donne  probably  traveled 
abroad,  as  we  know  that  Wotton  did,  with  the  design  (as  we 
should  put  it)  of  entering  the  diplomatic  service.  In  1592 
we  find  Donne  again  in  England,  a  student  at  Lincoln's  Inn 
and  intimate  with  the  young  poet,  Christopher  Brooke,  the 
friend  of  Browne  and  Wither.  Donne  certainly  enjoyed 
extraordinary  advantages  in  the  study  of  science  and  language. 
His  curiosity  appears  to  have  led  him  early  to  wide  reading  on 
a  diversity  of  subjects,  especially  law  and  the  dialectics  of 
theology.  But  it  does  not  appear  that  he  became  "a  con- 
vinced opponent  of  Romanism"  until  the  year  1603.  Donne 
was  attendant  at  the  famous  meetings  at  the  Mermaid  Tavern, 
where  he  met  Shakespeare,  Jonson,  Drayton,  Beaumont,  and 
many  lesser  men.  Reputation  as  a  poet  and  a  scholar  came 
to  Donne  early.  He  was  possessed  of  a  competence;  and  his 
expectations  were  doubled  on  the  untimely  death  of  his  only 
brother  when  but  just  of  age.  Donne  spent  his  money,  too,  in 
the  manner  of  a  gentleman,  frequenting  the  best  literary  and 
fashionable  society.  He  seems  to  have  been  a  man  of  hand- 
some person  and  engaging  manners;  and  he  easily  acquired 
a  host  of  friends.  But  one  thing  stood  against  preferment. 
His  uncle.  Father  Heywood  —  at  one  time  "esteemed  the 
Provincial  of  the  English  Jesuits"  and  lodged  in  the  Tower 
for  his  activity  in  political  intrigue  —  had  long  lived  abroad, 
conspicuous  among  the  proscribed  recusants;  and  Donne  was 
suspected  of  more  than  a  sympathy  with  the  old  faith. 


DESCRIPTIVE  POEMS  359 

Donne  began  his  literary  career  as  a  satirist,  though  he 
himself  published  nothing.  To  Donne's  Satires  we  need 
not  return.  In  1596,  when  the  expedition  against  the  Spanish 
king  was  fitted  out,  Donne  offered  himself  as  a  volunteer 
to  the  Earl  of  Essex  and  was  accepted.  He  accompanied 
both  expeditions  against  Spain;  and  in  that  against  Cadiz 
formed  an  intimacy  with  Thomas  Egerton,  son  of  Lord 
Chancellor  Ellesmere.  The  two  descriptive  poems,  "The 
Storm"  and  "The  Calm,"  belong  to  this  period.  Ben  Jonson 
admired  the  latter  and  declared  to  Drummond  that  he  had 
"by  heart  .  .  .  that  dust  and  feathers  do  not  stir,  all 
is  so  quiet."     The  passage  to  which  Jonson  alluded  runs: 

The  fighting  place  now  seamen's  rags  supply; 
And  all  the  tackling  is  a  frippery. 
No  use  of  lanthornes;  and  in  one  place  lay 
Feathers  and  dust,  today  and  yesterday. 

There  is  no  better  illustration  of  Donne's  uncompromising 
realism  matched  with  his  characteristic  remoteness  of  thought 
than  this  which  follows.  He  is  speaking  of  the  storm  and  its 
effects  on  his  shipmates: 

Some  coffined  in  their  cabins  lie,  equally 
Grieved  that  they  are  not  dead,  and  yet  must  die. 
And  as  sin-burdened  souls  from  grave  will  creep 
At  the  last  day,  some  forth  their  cabins  peep 
And  trembling  ask  what  news  and  do  hear  so 
As  jealous  husbands  what  they  would  not  know. 
Some  sitting  on  the  hatches,  would  seem  there 
With  hideous  gazing  to  fear  away  fear. 
Then  note  they  the  ship's  sicknesses,  the  mast 
Shaked  with  an  ague  and  the  hold  and  waste 
With  a  salt  dropsy  clogged,  and  all  our  tacklings 
Snapping,  like  too-too-high-stretched  treble  strings, 
And  from  our  tattered  sails  rags  drop  down  so 
As  from  one  hanged  in  chains  a  year  ago. 

Indeed,  nothing  could  be  more  discordant  to  the  general  accep- 
tation of  poetry  than  these  harsh,  vivid,  and  ingenuous  lines. 
We  are  concerned  neither  with  their  place  in  literature  nor 


36o        DONNE  AND  THE  LYRICAL  POETS 

their  qualities  as  poetry,  but  with  their  marked  character- 
istics and  divergences  from  the  prevailing  type  of  the  moment. 
And  as  to  this,  there  can  be  no  two  opinions. 

On  his  return  from  the  Cadiz  expedition  the  good  offices 
of  his  friend,  young  Egerton,  procured  Donne  the  post  of 
secretary  to  his  exalted  father  the  Lord  Chancellor.  This 
post  Donne  held  for  four  years,  throwing  himself  heart  and 
soul  into  the  amusements  and  the  frivolities  of  the  court,  yet 
reserving  from  every  day  some  part  to  slake  in  study  what  he 
calls  "an  hydroptic  Immoderate  desire  of  human  learning." 
It  was  in  these  years  that  Donne  acquired  his  great  repute  as 
a  wit  and  a  poet,  carelessly  tossing  off  both  verse  and  prose 
(the  latter  in  the  form  of  "paradoxes"  and  problems),  to  be 
read  in  clubs,  discussed  in  ordinaries,  and  copied  into  man- 
uscript commonplace  books,  the  author  taking  not  the  least 
heed  as  to  the  printing  or  preservation  of  either. 

The  lyrical  poetry  of  a  secular  character  which  Donne  has 
left  us  lies  in  point  of  date  of  writing  between  1592  and  1602. 
It  contains  that  fascinating,  yet  forbidding,  group  of  poems 
which  add  to  all  his  other  traits  of  idiosyncrasy  the  new  note 
of  a  frank  and  daring  cynicism.  The  audacious  outspoken- 
j^  ness  of  several  of  these  erotic  poems  has  blinded  readers  to 
their  possible  autobiographical  significance.  And  yet  these 
poems  give  us  really  very  little  definite  biographical  infor- 
mation. They  are  often  as  cryptic  as  the  Sonnets  of  Shake- 
speare themselves.  Indeed,  it  is  possible  that  we  may  make 
too  much  of  all  these  throes,  and  agonies,  and  intensities  of 
fleshly  love.  There  is  such  a  thing  as  the  libertine  in  thought 
as  well  as  the  roue  in  practice.  Of  the  latter  we  hear  very 
little  subjectively  in  literature.  He  wallows  in  his  sty,  and 
even  Circe  takes  little  note  of  him  save  to  feed  him.  It  is 
otherwise  with  the  libertine  in  thought.  It  is  the  adventure, 
the  danger,  the  imaginativeness  of  the  pursuit  of  unlawful 
love  —  dare  we  call  it  the  sporting  instinct  ? —  which  interests 
him.  The  very  cynicism  of  Donne's  earlier  erotic  poetry 
confirms  this  opinion.  It  was  the  same  active  insatiable 
curiosity  and  interest  in  the  fulness  of  life  which  caused  Donne 
on  the  one  hand  to  dip  into  forbidden  volumes  of  heresy, 


EARLIER  LYRICS  361 

alchemy,  and  pseudo-science,  and  on  the  other  to  court  and 
dally  inaginatively  with  experiences  which  come  not  to  those 
that  tread  the  beaten  paths  of  virtue.  Take,  for  example, 
the  famous  song,  "Go  and  catch  a  falling  star,"  wherein  one 
who  has  journeyed  far  to  see  "strange  sights"  is  compelled 
to  "swear" 

Nowhere 
Lives  a  woman  true,  and  fair. 

The  concluding  stanza  of  the  lyric  is  even  more  outrageously 
cynical: 

If  thou  find'st  one,  let  me  know. 
Such  a  pilgrimage  were  sweet, 
Yet  do  not,  I  would  not  go, 

Though  at  next  door  we  might  meet; 
Though  she  were  true  when  you  met  her. 
And  last  till  you  write  your  letter. 
Yet  she 
Will  be 
False,  ere  I  come,  to  two  or  three. 

The  poems  of  Donne  came  much  into  fashion  from  their 
absolute  originality,  and  it  may  be  affirmed  that  he  exerted 
a  powerfiil  influence  on  the  course  of  English  poetry  before 
he  w'as  aware  of  it  himself.  Indeed,  Donne's  attitude  to- 
wards his  poetry  throughout  his  life  was  that  of  the  gentle- 
man and  courtier  of  his  day,  except  that  he  was  sincere  in  his 
regard  of  poetry  as  a  trifle:  others  often  affected  this  attitude. 
Donne  was  always  an  insatiable  student.  "His  reading," 
says  Jessopp,  "embraced  an  extraordinary  range  of  learning, 
which  his  command  of  foreign  languages  and  his  great  ver- 
satility tempted  him  to  widen.  He  read  with  his  pen  in  hand, 
annotating,  digesting,  commenting.  Nothing  came  amiss: 
scholastic  theology  and  casuistry,  civil  and  common  law, 
history,  poetry,  philosophy,  even  medicine;  and  all  these 
subjects,  not  only  in  the  language  of  the  learned,  but  in  the 
vernacular  of  France,  Italy  and  Spain." 

In  1 601  Donne  crowned  a  romantic  love  story  with  an 
imprudent    marriage,    clandestinely    solemnized.     There    is 


362        DONNE  AND  THE  LYRICAL  POETS 

nothing  to  his  discredit  in  the  affair,  although  it  was  a  serious 
matter  in  those  days  to  marry  a  minor  against  her  father's 
wishes.  Anne  More  was  a  niece  of  Lord  Ellesmere's  second 
wife;  and,  as  the  daughter  of  Sir  George  More  of  Loscly, 
was  above  the  young  secretary  in  wealth  and  station.  Sir 
George  was  imprudent  in  leaving  the  young  people  together 
in  his  sister's  household,  and  very  insulting  when  Donne  dared 
to  ask  for  an  alliance  with  his  family.  In  short  Sir  George 
played  the  part  of  the  irate  father  to  perfection;  had  his  new 
son-in-law,  with  his  friend,  Christopher  Brooke,  and  his 
brother,  who  had  participated  in  the  marriage  ceremony, 
committed  to  prison,  and  procured  Donne's  dismissal  from 
the  services  of  the  Lord  Chancellor,  thus  destroying  once 
and  for  all  his  prospects  in  diplomacy.  It  mattered  little 
that  Sir  George  later  repented,  when  he  found  that  Donne  was 
neither  penniless  nor  without  friends.  Although  he  sought 
to  undo  the  work  of  his  passion  and  to  reinstate  his  son-in-law 
with  the  chancellor,  Lord  Ellesmere  replied  that  he  had 
"parted  with  a  friend  and  such  a  secretary  as  was  fitter  to 
serve  a  king  than  a  subject;  yet  that,  though  he  was  unfeignedly 
sorry  for  what  he  had  done,  it  was  inconsistent  with  his  place 
and  credit  to  discharge  and  readmit  servants  at  the  request 
of  passionate  petitioners. "  The  young  people  suffered  from 
narrowness  of  means  and  worry  for  years.  Children  came 
to  increase  their  needs;  and  sickness  and  death  visited  them. 
Donne's  own  health  was  always  precarious  and  he  dated  many 
of  his  letters  "from  my  hospital  at  Micham. "  Yet  even  in 
these  times  of  depressed  fortune,  Donne  was  not  without 
friends.  Though  young  Sir  Thomas  Egerton  had  died  in 
Ireland  meanwhile,  Sir  Francis  Wooley,  whom  Donne  had 
also  met  as  a  shipmate  on  the  Cadiz  expedition,  now  be- 
friended him.  A  tender  friendship  also  subsisted  between 
Donne  and  the  Herberts,  whom  he  had  first  met  when  their 
admirable  mother  was  residing  at  Oxford  for  the  education 
of  Edward,  afterwards  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury,  and  George, 
the  devotional  poet,  then  a  little  lad.  To  these  years  (as 
many  letters  which  have  been  preserved  attest)  belong  the 
foundations   also  of  Donne's  enduring  friendships  with   Sir 


"BIATHANATOS"  363 

Henry  Goodere  and  with  that  engaging  and  munificent  patron 
of  poetry  and  learning,  Lucy  Countess  of  Bedford.  Later 
Sir  Robert  Drury  offered  Donne  and  his  family  a  home  with 
him  in  his  splendid  mansion  beyond  Temple  Bar.  As  to 
his  marriage,  it  turned  out  ideal  in  its  happiness  and,  when 
his  beloved  wife  died,  he  cherished  her  memory. 

It  was  during  these  years  of  waiting  and  intellectual  de- 
pression that  Donne  wrote  his  strange  prose  treatise,  Biathan- 
atos,  "a  declaration  of  that  paradox  or  thesis  that  self- 
homicide  is  not  so  naturally  sin  that  it  may  never  be  otherwise. " 
We  can  see  in  this  subject  what  were  some  of  the  ponderings 
of  this  dialectic  mind  in  a  time  of  desperate  fortune.  This 
work,  though  known  to  his  nearest  friends,  was  not  printed 
during  Donne's  life;  and  in  a  letter  accompanying  a  man- 
uscript of  it  sent  to  a  friend  much  later,  Donne  describes  it 
as  "a  misinterpretable  subject  .  .  .  written  by  Jack 
Donne  and  not  by  Dr.  Donne";  and  adds:  "Preserve  it  for 
me  if  I  live;  and  if  I  die,  I  only  forbid  it  the  press  and  the 
fire."  Biathanatos  has  been  described  as  "a  literary  curi- 
osity —  a  tour  de  force,  unique  in  English  literature,  a  survival 
of  the  old  dialectic  disputations,  carried  on  strictly  according 
to  the  rules  of  syllogistic  reason,  which  the  medieval  schoolmen 
loved  so  well. " 

The  steps  by  which  Donne  was  drawn  more  and  more 
into  the  religious  controversies  of  his  day  we  need  not  follow. 
Ignatius  his  Conclave  is  a  fierce  little  satire  in  Latin  and 
English  and  decidedly  wanting  in  good  taste.  It  was  written 
about  1608  and  is  alone  sufliicient  to  attest  the  author's  com- 
plete severance  from  the  Jesuit  influences  of  his  youth.  Donne 
was  apparently  well  acquainted  with  Bacon  and  may  have 
been  one  of  "the  good  pens  that  forsake  me  not"  that  Bacon 
kept  busy  in  the  revision  and  Latinizing  of  his  works.  At 
some  time  prior  to  16 10,  Donne  became  secreatry  to  Lord  Hay, 
afterwards  Earl  of  Carlisle,  who  was  at  the  moment  high  in 
the  royal  favor.  This  brought  Donne  into  closer  contact 
with  the  king,  and  a  happy  argument  on  the  question  of  the 
oath  of  allegiance  by  Donne  in  the  king's  presence  elicited 
the  royal  command  that  he  put  the  case  in  writing.     The 


364        DONNE  AND  THE   LYRICAL  POETS 

Pseudo  Martyr,  1610,  was  the  result,  a  work  that  gained  an 
immediate  popularity  and  confirmed  King  James  in  his 
determination  that  Donne  should  enter  the  church.  This 
Donne  was  long  reluctant  to  do  from  certain  honest  scruples 
and  from  a  fear  lest  his  motives  might  suffer  misconstruction. 
There  was  perhaps  another  reason.  With  all  his  theological 
learning,  Donne  was  a  man  of  large  and  tolerant  ideas.  "You 
know,"  he  writes  to  Sir  Henry  Goodere,  "I  never  fettered 
or  imprisoned  the  word  religion;  .  .  .  immuring  it  in 
a  Rome,  or  a  Wittenberg,  or  a  Geneva. "  The  Christian 
sects,  he  continues,  "are  all  virtually  beams  of  one  sun,  and 
wheresoever  they  find  clay  hearts,  they  harden  them  and 
moulder  them  to  dust.  .  .  .  They  are  not  so  contrary 
as  the  north  and  south  poles;  .  .  .  they  are  connatural 
pieces  of  one  circle. "  At  last  the  king  became  importunate. 
Donne  was  ordained  in  1615.  No  one  knowing  the  man  can 
hold  his  decision  in  anything  but  respect.  A  year  later  Donne 
became  one  of  the  royal  chaplains;  and  in  16 17,  Dean  of 
St.  Paul's.  He  was  a  great  and  eloquent  preacher,  and  a 
man  of  sweet  and  fervent  piety.  His  ministrations,  his 
sanctity,  and  his  charity,  all  can  be  read  in  Walton's  incom- 
parable Life.     Donne  died  in  1626. 

There  are  more  mistakes  prevalent  about  Donne  as  a 
poet  than  about  any  one  of  even  approximately  equal  rank. 
The  first  is  the  notion  that  Donne  was  a  late  Jacobean  or 
Caroline  writer,  contemporary  as  a  poet  with  Cowley.  This 
error  arises  from  the  accident  that  the  earliest  extant  edition 
of  Donne's  poetry  is  posthumous  and  dates  1633.  Cowley's 
Poetical  Blossoms,  the  appropriately  named  budding  poetry  of 
a  precocious  boy  of  thirteen,  appeared  in  the  same  year. 
Donne  would  have  been  sixty,  if  alive.  Without  entering 
into  the  clear  evidences  which  are  at  hand  for  all  to  use,  Donne 
is  an  Elizabethan  in  his  poetry  in  the  strictest  acceptation  of 
that  term,  the  forerunner  of  a  remarkable  movement,  not 
soon  assimilated  or  even  imitated  by  his  immediate  contem- 
poraries. 

A  more  serious  error  is  that  which  has  arisen  out  of  the 
term   "metaphysical   school   of  poetry."     The   word   "met- 


"THE  METAPHYSICAL  SCHOOL" 


3^5 


aphysics"  was  first  associated  with  the  poetry  of  Donne  by 
Dryden  in  his  Discourse  on  Satire;  and  Cowley  is  there  charged 
with  imitating  Donne,  which  it  is  not  to  be  questioned  that 
he  did.  Although  the  mention  of  Donne  is  purely  incidental, 
he  is  praised  for  "variety,  multiplicity  and  choiceness  of 
thought/'  Now  this  passage  fell  under  the  eye  of  the  great 
Dr.  Samuel  Johnson  when  he  was  writing  his  "Life  of  Cowley" 
in  The  Lives  of  the  English  Poets.  He  expanded  it  into  a 
sonorous  critical  dictum  in  which  the  word  "  metaphysjcal " 
was^extended  from  an  incidental  trait_of_Donne  and  his  lat£ 
imitator,  Cowley,  to  the  distinguishiDfi;_cIiaracteristic  of  a 
whole  "school"  of  poetry;  in  which  this  "school"  was  thrown 
infrt  viir^nf  r-r.nfra'^f  as^  wits^  With  real  poetsT^nd  m  which  _ 
onFy  one_thing  was  omitted  concernmg  Donne,  and  that  was 
the  "variety,  multiplicity  and^  choiceness  of  thought  jwitli__ 
which^th^judicious  Dryden  had  credited  h»m.  TKis  famous 
deliverance  of  Dr.  Johnson's  is  a  glaring  example  of  the  spe- 
cies of  criticism  which  is  worked  up  out  of  the  critical  dicta 
of  others,  a  mystery  unhappily  not  confined  to  the  age  of  the 
Georges.  We  may  give  over  expectation  of  a  time  when 
popular  histories  of  literature  will  not  discuss  "the  metaphys- 
ical poets"  in  eloquent  passages  expanded  from  Dr.  Johnson's 
"Life  of  Cowley,"  as  Dr.  Johnson  expanded  the  incidental 
words  of  Dryden.  The  instinct  that  bids  each  critic  follow 
his  predecessor  has  determined  once  and  for  all  that  the  poet- 
ical indiscretions  of  the  saintly  Dean  of  St.  Paul's,  perpetrated 
thirty-five  years  before^^^all  be  linked  to  all  eternity  to  the 
clever  imitations  of  a  school-boy  fifty  years  his  junior.  But 
let  us  turn  from  the  discouraging  negative  function  of  crit- 
icism, the  detectit)n  of  error,  to  its  positive  mission,  the  affir- 
mation —  if  we  may  be  so  fortunate  as  to  find  it  —  of  truth. 

The  salient  qualities  of  the  poetry  of  Donne  are,  fore- 
most, a  contempt  for  mere  form,  shown  in  his  disregard  of 
the  graces  of  diction  as  such,  alliteration,  choice  of  words 
for  sound  or  smoothness,  and  other  like  tricks  of  the  trade^ 
Neither  harshness  of  sound  nor  violence  to  meter  deter  him; 
and  he  repeats  and  uses  the  plain  word  where  necessary  to 
the  force  and  rhetoric  of  the  thought. 


366         DONNE  AND  THE   LYRICAL   POETS 

Some  man  unworthy  to  be  possessor 

Of  old  or  new  love,  himself  being  false  or  weak 
Thought  his  pain  and  shame  would  be  the  lesser, 
If  on  womankind  he  might  his  anger  wreak, 
And  thence  the  law  did  grow. 
One  might  but  one  man  know; 
But  are  other  creatures  so  ? 

It  was  with  reference  to  such  a  line  as  the  fourth  that  Jonson 
observed  to  Drummond  that  Donne  "deserved  hanging  for 
not  keeping  accent. "  And  yet  there  will  be  found  a  rhetorical 
value  in  even  the  roughness  of  Donne.  His  stanzas  are  often 
elaborate  and  always  original,  they  are  fitting  to  the  subject 
in  hand.  Moreover,  the  roughness  of  Donne  has  been  exag- 
gerated. Secondly,  Donne's  contempt  of  form  carried  with 
it  an  absolute  discarding  of  the  poetical  apparatus  of  the 
past.  The  gods  of  Greece  and  Rome  dwell  not  with  him, 
and  though  abundantly  learned  he  scorns  allusion  or  imitation, 
representing  in  this  the  very  antithesis  of  Jonson.  Donne's 
illustrations  are  powerful  for  their  homeliness,  vividness,  and 
originality.  He  bids  a  lover  ride  "till  age  snow  white  hairs 
on  thee."  He  craves  "to  talk  with  some  old  lover's  ghost 
that  died  before  the  god  of  love  was  born";  Christ  is  addressed 
as  the  "strong  ram  that  batterest  heaven  for  me."  Once 
more,  Donne  is  not  a  nature  poet,  his  work  discloses  no  love 
of  animals  or  of  flowers.  The  forms  of  this  world  were  nothin-g 
to  him;  he  neither  painted  nature  nor  sought  nature  for  his 
model.  There  is,  for  example,  a  strange  absence  of  the  sense 
of  color  in  the  poetry  of  Donne.  When  he  uses  color  words 
at  all,  they  are  crude  and  perfunctory.  On  the  other  hand 
the  abstractions  of  light  and  darkness  are  always  before  him. 
The  relations  of  men  to  each  other  were  likewise  matters  sealed. 
There  is  a  completer  absence  of  dramatic  instinct  in  Donne 
than  in  any  poet  of  his  age.  The  concrete  was  nothing  to 
him  except  as  illustrative  of  the  abstract.  The  reason  for 
this,  as  for  his  want  of  an  appreciation  of  nature,  is  to  be  found 
in  the  intense  subjectivity  of  his  poetry.  It  is  related  of  him 
that  he  never  saw,  much  less  knew  personally,  the  young 
maiden,  Elizabeth  Drury,  whose  untimely  death  he  has  immor- 


"THE  ANATOMY  OF  THE  WORLD"        367 

talized  in  that  strange  and  fascinating  poem,  "The  Anatomy 
of  the  World. "  To  him  she  is  a  beautiful  abstraction,  the 
symbol  of  all  that  is  spiritual,  divine,  and  permanent  in  this 
passing  world.  The  symbol  is  not  the  real  thing;  the  real 
is  here  the  ideal.  We  must  cross  into  the  kindred  sphere 
of  speculative  thought  for  the  glow,  the  white  passion,  the 
power  and  subtlety  of  this  remarkable  work;  and  yet  it  remains 
poetry,  for,  however  speculative  its  thought  and  eloquently 
rhetorical  the  expression,  its  real  traffic  is  with  the  divine 
illusions  and  phantasmagoria  of  this  world.  The  person- 
ality of  Donne  is  ever  present  in  his  works;  but  it  is  not  his 
bodily  self  but  the  spiritual  part  of  him  in  these  poems,  sub- 
limed, if  it  may  be  so  put,  into  a  universal  meaning.  Donne 
is  himself  the  spiritual  microcosm  of  the  world.  With  him 
the  one  is  all;  and  hence  to  such  a  man  the  body  is  but  a  veil 
for  the  soul.     He  speaks  of  the  body  of  Elizabeth   Drury  as 

so  pure  and  thin 
Because  it  need  disguise  no  thought  within, 
'T  was  but  a  through-light  scarf  her  mind  to  enrol 
Or  exhalation  breathed  out  of  her  soul. 

So  that 

We  understand  her  sight;   her  pure  and  eloquent  blood 
Spoke  in  her  cheeks,  and  so  distinctly  wrought 
That  one  might  almost  say  her  body  thought. 

To  Donne  the  soul  alone  is  worthy  of  contemplation  whose 
inner  harmony  is  broken  by  too  close  a  contact  with  the  objec- 
tive world.  What  seems  a  confusion  of  visual  ideas  really 
has  this  inner  contemplative  harmony  to  one  to  whom  time 
and  space  are  naught.  By  a  natural  step  Donne  "entertains 
a  universal,  almost  Pantheistic  faith  in  the  unity  and  totality 
of  his  soul  with  all  souls. "  In  Donne  will  be  found  a  roman- 
ticism of  soul.  His  lyrics  and  satires  are  to  be  regarded  as 
his  struggle  with  sense.  The  sonnets,  epistles,  and  "Anatomy 
of  the  World,"  these  are  the  real  Donne,  though  not  alone 
the  most  poetical  of  his  work.         ^ 

Returning,  Donne's  originality  shows  itself  in  his  themes 
which   are  of  life,   death,  everything,   and   all;  whatever  he 


368         DONNE   AND  THE   LYRICAL   POETS 

touches  he  treats  as  an  abstraction.  Take  for  example  such 
lines  as  these,  apostrophizing  "Strong  and  long  lived  Death": 

The  earth's  face  is  but  thy  table;   there  are  set 
Plants,  cattle,  men,  dished  for  Death  to  eat. 

Nor  will  this  earth  serve  him;   he  sinks  the  deep 
Where  harmless  fish  monastic  silence  keep, 
Who  (were  Death  dead)  the  roes  of  living  sand 
Might  sponge  that  element,  and  make  it  land. 
He  rounds  the  air,  and  breaks  the  hymnic  notes 
In  birds',  Heaven's  choristers',  organic  throats. 
Which,  if  they  did  not  die,  might  seem  to  be 
A  tenth  rank  in  the  heavenly  hierarchy. 

His  originality  is  likewise  in  his  style,  which  in  addition  to  the 
negative  qualities  already  noted  displays  a  totally  new  range 
of  imagery  derived  from  science,  medicine,  law,  mathematics, 
astronomy,  alchemy,  and  the  chemistry  of  the  day.  Not 
"learned  eccentric"  as  some  one  described  the  vocabulary 
of  Robert  Browning  at  times,  nor  crammed  for  the  nonce  as 
in  Jonson's  Alchemist,  but  the  natural  utterance  of  a  mind 
accustomed  to  think  in  technical  terms.  In  Donne's  vocab- 
ulary there  are  many  peculiar  words,  not  technicalities,  and 
many  words  repeatedly  used  with  a  kind  of  fondness.  His 
must  have  been  one  of  those  minds  that  form  strong  associa- 
tions about  certain  symbols,  and  use  words  with  a  deeper 
significance  than  can  ever  reach  him  who  runs  as  he  reads. 

When  all  has  been  said,  there  remains  however  that  quality 
by  which  Donne  is  chiefly  known,  namely,  his  use  of  conceit. 
Of  the  conceit,  its  origin  among  the  imitators  of  Petrarch,  and 
of  Sidney's  position  as  the  popularizer  of  extravagant  met- 
aphors among  the  lyrists,  we  have  already  heard  in  this  book. 
That  the  conceit  originated  with  Donne  is  no  longer  main- 
tained by  those  who  have  knowledge  on  the  subject;  but  it 
is  still  held  by  some  that  Donne  is  responsible  for  its 
prevalence  in  Jacobean  poetry:  a  position  equally  untenable. 
The  mistake  in  this  whole  matter  is  the  general  confusion  of 
Donne  with  the  "concettists"  who  preceded  him,  and  who, 
affected  more  or  less  by  him,  followed  him.     What  may  be 


THE   DONNIAN  CONCEIT  369 

true  of  English  concettists  in  general  may  not  be  true  of  Donne 
in  particular  and  vice  versa.  The  confusion  of  Donne  with 
Gongora  is  as  bad  as  the  confusion  of  Donne  with  Lyiy.  That 
Donne  is  a  concettist  is  unquestionable.  He  often  employs 
a  thought  whicH  is  tar- fetched  and  ingenious  rather  than  of 
natural  and  obvious  meaning.  Moreover,  it  is  true  of  the 
Donnian  conceit  (in  contrast  with  the  hyperbolical  conceit  of 
Sidney,  the  ingenuities  of  Cowley,  and  the  antithetical  wit 
of  the  next,  the  "classical",  age),  that  the  twist  with  Donne, 
if  it  may  be  so  called,  is  in  the  thought_jather  than  in  thc- 
^'ord^  Let  us  take  a  typicat'pas sage  of  Donne  from  a  poem 
entitled  "The  Ecstasy."  The  theme  is  of  the  spiritual  nature 
of  the  ecstasy  of  love : 

When  love  with  one  another  so 

Interanimates  two  souls. 
That  abler  soul,  which  thence  doth  flow. 

Defects  of  loneliness  controls. 
We  then,  who  are  this  new  soul,  know 

Of  what  we  are  composed  and  made: 
For  th'  atomies,  of  which  we  grow, 

Are  soul,  whom  no  change  can  invade. 
But  O,  alas!   so  long,  so  far 

Our  bodies  why  do  we  forbear  ? 
They  are  ours,  though  not  we;  we  are 

The  intelligences,  they  the  spheres; 
We  owe  them  thanks,  because  they  thus 

Did  us  to  us  at  first  convey. 
Yielded  their  senses'  force  to  us, 

Nor  are  dross  to  us  but  allay. 
On  man  heaven's  influence  works  not  so, 

But  that  it  first  imprints  the  air; 
For  soul  into  the  soul  may  flow 

Though  it  to  body  first  repair. 

This  passage  is  subtle,  as  is  the  whole  poem,  almost  dia- 
lectic. A  keen,  sinuous,  reasoning  mind  is  playing  with  its 
powers.  Except  for  the  implied  personification  of  the  body 
regarded  apart  from  the  soul,  the  language  is  free  from  figure; 
there  is  no  confusion  of  thought.  The  new  soul,  the  able 
soul,  is  that  which,  uniting  the  strength  in  the  soul  of  each 


370        DONNE  AND  THE  LYRICAL  POETS 

lover,  "controls"  loneliness  in  that  union.  This  new  soul 
is  indestructible,  because  composed  of  the  atomies  (atoms 
we  should  say)  which,  being  indivisible  and  the  primal  mate- 
rial of  all  things,  are  incapable  of  destruction.  There  is  the 
distinctively  Donnian^eniployroent  ofjdgas^derived  frorn^  phys- 
ical and  speculative  science:  the  "atomies"  with  their  indiv- 
isiKility,  a  term  of  the  physics"  of  the  day;  the  body  is  the 
"sphere"  or  superficies  which  includes  within  it  the  soul,  a 
term  of  the  old  astro-philosophy;  the  body  is  not  "dross"  but 
an  "allay,"  alchemical  terms;  the  "influence"  of  heaven  is  the 
use  of  that  word  in  an  astrological  sense,  meaning  "the  radia- 
tion of  power  from  the  stars  in  certain  positions  or  collocations 
affecting  human  actions  and  destinies;"  and  lastly,  the  phrase 
"imprints  the  air"  involves  an  idea  of  the  old  philosophy, 
by  which  "sensuous  perception  is  explained  by  effluxes  of 
atoms  from  the  things  perceived  whereby  images  are  produced 
('imprinted')  which  strike  our  senses."  Donne  subtly 
transfers  this  purely  physical  conception  to  the  transference 
of  divine  ifHIuence.  How  different  all  this  is  to  the  earlier 
hyperboles  of  the  bidneian  school, the  rhapsodical  extravagance 
of  Crashaw,  or  the  persistently  clever  ingenuity  of  Cowley, 
need  be  pointed  out  only  to  be  understood.  In  Donne,  even 
where  the  conceit  in  all  its  ingenuity  does  exist,  it  is  again 
and  again  raised  out  of  its  class  by  a  certain  fervor,  sincerity, 
and  applicability  that  not  only  condones  its  extravagance 
but  justifies  it.  Such  is  the  famous  image  of  the  compass, 
best  known  of  the  Donnian  conceits,  yet  none  the  less  worthy 
of  quotation  once  more.  It  occurs  in  a  poem  entitled  "A 
Valediction  Forbidding  Mourning,"  written  to  his  beloved 
wife,  and  runs  thus : 

Our  two  souls  therefore,  which  are  one, 
Though  I  must  go,  endure  not  yet 

A  breach,  but  an  expansion. 
Like  gold  to  airy  thinness  beat. 

If  they  be  two,  they  are  two  so 

As  stiff  twin  compasses  are  two; 
Thy  soul,  the  fix'd  footj  makes  no  show 

To  move,  but  doth,  if  th'  other  do. 


THE  INFLUENCE  OF  DONNE  371 

And  though  it  in  the  center  sit, 

Yet,  when  the  other  far  doth  roam, 
It  leans,  andjigarkens  after  it. 

And  grows  erect,  as  that  comes  home. 

Such  wilt  thou  be  to  me,  who  must. 

Like  th'  other  foot,  obliquely  run; 
ThylirmriesFTnaSes  my  circle  just. 

And  makes  me  end  where  I  begun. 

A  letter  remains  extant  bearing  date  December,  1614, 
addressed  by  Donne  to  his  friend  Sir  Henry  Goodere  in  which 
he  writes : 

One  thing  now  I  must  tell  you;  but  so  softly  that  I  am  loth  to 
hear  myself,  and  so  softly  that  if  that  good  lady  (Lady  Bedford) 
were  in  the  room  with  you  and  this  letter,  she  might  not  hear.  It  is 
that  I  am  brought  to  a  necessity  of  printing  my  poems,  and  address- 
ing them  to  my  Lord  Chamberlain.  This  I  mean  to  do  forthwith;  not 
for  much  public  view,  but  at  mine  own  cost,  a  few  copies.  .  .  .  I  must 
do  this  as  a  valediction  to  the  world  before  I  take  orders  .  .  . 
and  I  would  be  just  to  my  written  words  to  Lord  Harington  to  write 
nothing  after  that. 

This  edition,  if  ever  actually  printed,  has  perished;  and,  save 
for  this  mention,  there  is  no  word  of  it.  We  may  believe  that 
Donne  bade  a  final  farewell  to  his  Muse  two  years  before  the 
death  of  Shakespeare.  Even  the  divine  poems,  which  include 
a  few  sonnets,  hymns,  transcriptions  of  the  psalms,  and  the 
like,  were  doubtless  all  of  them  written  before  his  ordination. 
Of  the  influence  of  Donne  on  what  came  after  little  need 
be  said  here.  The  poets  that  survived  Shakespeare  to  write 
into  the  reign  of  King  Charles  —  to  name  only  the  most  im- 
portant —  were  Jonson,  Drayton,  Chapman,  Browne,  and 
the  Fletchers.  Of  these,  the  last  three  were  wholly  Spense- 
rians,  and  Drayton  remained  to  the  end  at  least  half  such. 
Chapman  went  his  ample,  fantastic  way  and,  so  far  as  we  can 
make  out,  wrote  less  and  less  after  the  completion  of  his 
translation  of  the  Odessey,  published  in  the  year  of  Shake- 
speare's death.  But  Jonson  rated  Donne  at  his  due  and  a 
friendship  honorable  to  both  subsisted  between  them,  Donne 


372        DONNE  AND   THE   LYRICAL   POETS 

penning  more  than  one  poetical  epistle  to  Jonson.  To  Donne, 
on  the  other  hand,  Jonson  sent  his  Epigrams  with  verses 
declaring. 

If  I  find  but  one 

Marked  by  thy  hand,  and  with  the  better  stone, 

My  title's  sealed. 

In  another  epigram  Jonson  trumpeted  his  opinion  of  his 
friend  in  lines  beginning: 

Donne,  the  delight  of  Phoebus  and  each  Muse, 

Who  to  thy  one,  all  other  brains  refuse; 

Whose  every  work,  of  thy  most  early  wit. 

Came  forth  example  and  remains  so  yet. 

Jonson  even  paid  the  tribute  of  imitating  what  he  conceived 
to  be  the  Donnian  conceit  in  a  little  poem  sent  to  Drummond 
on  "a  Lover's  Dust,  Made  Sand  for  an  Hour-glass."  But 
the  great  dramatic  satirist  was  much  too  self-centered  and 
independent  to  be  affected  by  Donne  or  any  one  else,  when 
he  had  once  laid  his  certain  course,  by  theoretical  compass 
and  classical  chart,  to  the  port  of  poetical  celebrity.  Among 
the  more  important  younger  lyrists  Drummond  published  the 
first  part  of  his  Poems  in  i6i6,  having  previously  appeared 
first  in  print  three  years  earlier  in  Tears  on  the  Death  of  Mcel- 
iades,  a  pastoral  name  for  Prince  Henry.  Thomas  Carew 
was  but  twenty  in  1616;  but  Robert  Herrick  and  George  Her- 
bert were  both  Carew's  seniors,  the  one  by  five  years,  the 
latter  by  three.  Both  must  have  begun  to  write  poetry  by 
this  time;  but  Herrick  is  the  truest  of  the  lyrical  "sons  of  Ben" 
and  bettered  his  father's  hard  if  noble  favor  with  a  beauty 
all  his  own.  Herbert  remains  the  most  certain  of  the  succes- 
sors of  Donne  to  be  affected  immediately  by  his  influences 
in  poetry;  and  Herbert,  in  his  youth,  as  we  have  seen,  was 
personally  intimate  with  Donne.  A  recent  editor  claims  for 
Herbert  that  "he  devised  the  religious  love-lyric  and  heirjjxo- 
duced  structure  mto  the"  snort  poem. ''^  ^\Vith  the  long  line 
of  Tyn?ts~^~efcjre--as"an3^  tTle~weaTth  of  Iheir  stanzaic  variety 
and  invention,  this  last  is  obviously  too  large  a  claim,  but  in 
^G.  H.  Palmer,  The  Life  and  Works  of  George  Herbert,  i,  57. 


DRUMMOND  OF  HAWTHORNDEN  373 

view  of  the  inventiveness  of  Donne  as  to  stanza  and  the  intensity 
of  the  passion  of  his  secularlove-songs.  it  may  well  be  sur- 
mised  tRat~tHe  poetry  ot  Uonne  was  George  Herbert's  imme- 
diate poetical  inspiration  and  model.  To  Herbert,  even  more 
certainly,  Donne  transmitted  his  own  peculiar  use  of  the 
conceit,  thoiAoJi  Herbert  is  often  quaintly  ingenious  where 
Donne  flashes  unexpected  illumination  by  the  originaPbias 
of  his  mind. 

William  Drummond,  known  as  Drummond  of  Hawthorn- 
den  from  his  estate  near  Edinburgh,  was  born  in  1585,  the 
son  of  John  Drummond,  gentleman-usher  to  James  before 
he  became  King  of  England  and  knighted  by  that  monarch 
in  1603.  The  poet  Drummond  was  educated  at  the  University 
of  Edinburgh  and  in  France,  and  joined  his  father  at  the 
London  court  of  the  new  Scottish  king  at  the  most  impression- 
able time  of  a  young  man's  life.  In  several  extant  letters 
which  Drummond  wrote  home  to  friends  in  Scotland  about  this 
time,  he  shows  his  interest  and  pleasure  in  the  pageantry 
and  ceremonial  of  the  court.  But  a  list  of  his  reading,  also 
extant,  discloses  him  likewise  busily  engaged  with  poetry 
and  romance.  His  countryman  Alexander's  Aurora,  Eiiphues, 
the  Arcadia,  and  the  Diana  of  Montemayor;  Love's  Labor'  s 
Lost,  A  Midsiimtner-lSlight's  Dream,  Romeo  and  Juliet,  Lucrece 
and  The  Passionate  Pilgrim  were  among  the  books  read  by 
this  Scottish  youth  in  1606;  and  later  we  hear  of  many  French 
and  Italian  writers :  of  Daniel,  and  Davison's  Poetical  Rhap- 
sody and  (most  significant)  the  Arcadia,  read  a  second  time. 
In  16 ID,  on  the  death  of  his  father,  Drummond  gave  up  defi- 
nitely his  intent  to  follow  the  law  and  retired  to  his  beauti- 
ful estate  of  Hawthornden  to  devote  himself  to  poetry  and 
scholarly  leisure.  It  was  there  that  he  planned  to  lead  the 
lady,  who  had  inspired  much  of  his  sincere  and  beautiful 
poetry  and  whose  memory,  on  her  untimely  death  in  1615, 
before  their  marriage,  he  cherished  for  so  many  years.  It 
was  at  Hawthornden,  four  years  later,  that  Drummond  enter- 
tained Ben  Jonson  on  that  worthy's  pilgrimage  afoot  to 
Edinburgh;  and  doubtless  Drummond's  influence  and  appre- 
ciation of  Jonson's  poetry  and  reputation  at  the  English  court 


374         DONNE  AND  THE  LYRICAL  POETS 

procured  for  the  English  laureate  the  freedom  of  the  city  and 
other  attentions  which  the  citizens  of  Edinburgh  accorded 
him. 

The  poetry  of  Drummond  that  made  his  repute  is  comprised 
in  the  little  quarto  of  i6i6.  It  consists  of  songs  and  sonnets, 
addressed  for  the  most  part  to  the  lady  to  whom  he  was  be- 
trothed; of  a  collection  of  madrigals  and  epigrams,  doubtless 
the  earliest  of  his  poetizing;  and  of  a  series  of  "spiritual 
poems,"  as  the  phrase  went,  entitled  Urania,  almost  certainly 
the  most  recently  written.  Drummond's  pattern  and  example 
is  Sir  Philip  Sidney  and  his  inspiration,  Petrarch.  To  quote 
from  a  fragment  printed  with  the  Poems  and  called  A  Char- 
acter of  Several  Authors:  "Among  our  English  poets  Petrarch 
is  imitated,  nay  surpassed  in  some  things  in  matter  and  man- 
ner: in  matter  none  approach  him  to  Sidney."  Later  he 
continues:  "Donne^mong  the  Anacreontic  lyrics,  is  second 
to  none,  and  fax  from  all  second.  '.  .  .  I  thinETif  he 
would,  he  might  easily  be  the  best  epigrammatist  we  have 
found  in  English. "  With  the  mention  of  Alexander,  who  is 
praised  in  this  passage  as  only  one  Scotchman  can  praise 
another,  we  complete  the  list  of  the  chief  poetical  influences  on 
Drummond.  But  inspired  by  the  work  of  other  men  though 
he  was,  this  new  poet  of  the  last  days  of  Shakespeare  was  far 
from  devoid  of  a  sweetness  and  gentle  originality  all  his  own. 
This  sonnet,  while  perhaps  not  among  the  very  best  of  Drum- 
mond, strikes  the  note  of  sincerity  that  marks  all  his  threnodies 
for  his  lost  Aurastella,  as  he  somewhere  calls  her: 

As,  in  a  dusky  and  tempestuous  night, 

A  star  is  wont  to  spread  her  locks  of  gold, 

And  while  her  pleasant  rays  abroad  are  roll'd. 

Some  spiteful  cloud  doth  rob  us  of  her  sight; 

Fair  soul  in  this  black  age  so  shin'd  thou  bright. 

And  made  all  eyes  with  wonder  thee  behold, 

Till  ugly  Death,  depriving  us  of  light. 

In  his  grim  misty  arms  thee  did  enfold. 

Who  more  shall  vaunt  true  beauty  here  to  see  ? 

What  hope  doth  more  in  any  heart  remain. 

That  such  perfections  shall  his  reason  rein. 


DRUMMOND  OF  HAWTHORNDEN  375 

If  beauty,  with  thee  born,  too  died  with  thee  ? 
World,  plain  no  more  of  Love,  nor  count  his  harms; 
With  his  pale  trophies  Death  hath  hung  his  arms. 

A  greater  originality  characterizes  this  serious  little   poem, 
which  the  author  denominates  a  madrigal: 

This  life,  which  seems  so  fair. 

Is  like  a  bubble  blown  up  in  the  air 

By  sporting  children's  breath, 

Who  chase  it  everywhere. 

And  strive  who  can  most  motion  it  bequeath: 

And  though  it  sometime  seem  of  its  own  might, 

Like  to  an  eye  of  gold,  to  be  fix'd  there, 

And  firm  to  hover  in  that  empty  height. 

That  only  is  because  it  is  so  light. 

But  in  that  pomp  it  doth  not  long  appear; 

For  even  when  most  admir'd,  it  in  a  thought. 

As  swell'd  from  nothing,  doth  dissolve  in  nought. 

Drummond  is  not  usually  as  free  of  conceit  as  these  two 
quotations  would  seem  to  indicate;  and  his  conceits,  where 
he  yields  to  hyperbole,  are  those  of  Petrarch,  or  rather  Sid- 
ney, never  those  of  Donne.  Drummond  loved  the  sonorous 
proper  names  of  classical  mythology  as  deeply  as  did  Milton 
after  him;  and  he  delighted,  like  Milton  again,  in  the  recondite 
allusions  involving  them.  Thus  Pythagoras  is  the  Samian; 
Boreas  is  Orithyia's  lover;  Venus,  the  Idalian  star  or  the  fair 
Erycine.  Achelous'  horn  stands  for  a  cornucopia;  nightin- 
gales are  "Pandionian  birds,"  and  birds  in  general,  "Am- 
phions  of  the  trees. "  Equally  dear  to  Drummond  are  unusual 
poetical  words:  brandon,  cynoper,  ramage,  decore,  panisks; 
and  his  originality  is  less  in  new  figures  than  in  a  loving  shaping 
of  old  material  into  a  something  different,  yet  reminiscent, 
like  a  faded  fragrance,  of  some  fair  thing  that  we  have  known 
before.  Drummond  welcomed  King  James  to  Scotland,  in 
16 1 7,  in  a  panegyric  of  much  poetic  value  called  The  River 
Forth  Feasting.  This  act  of  the  courtier  he  repeated  with 
failing  power,  save  for  its  adulation,  in  the  Entertainment  of 
Charles  when  that  monarch,  too,  visited  Scotland  in  1633. 
In  the  year  of  the  Shakespeare  folio,  1623,  Drummond  pub- 


376         DONNE  AND  THE  LYRICAL  POETS 

lished  a  book  of  devotional  poetry  of  great  beauty,  entitled 
Flowers  of  Sion,  in  which  he  displays,  as  in  his  prose  essay, 
/i  Cypress  Grove  (a  treatise  upon  death,  published  in  the 
same  volume),  a  singularly  Platonic  type  of  Christian  phil- 
osophy. Drummond's  later  life  shows  him  interested  in 
theoretical  mechanics  and  seeking  patents  for  the  invention  of 
various  contrivances,  chiefly  warlike  instruments.  He  was 
a  giver  of  books  to  his  university,  Edinburgh,  and  was  drawn 
into  the  vortex  of  the  unhappy  political  controversies  of  the 
day  towards  the  end  of  his  life.     He  died  in  1649. 

To  return  in  conclusion  to  Donne,  it  is  somewhat  discon- 
certing to  find  an  author  whom,  not  unlike  to  Walter  Savage 
\  Landor  in  our  own  late  century,  the  critics  can  not  glibly 

classify  as  the  founder  of  a  school  or  the  product  of  a  perfectly 
obvious  series  of  literary  influences.  Donne  is  a  poet  of  this 
difl&cult  type.  For,  just  as  Shakespeare  touched  life  and  man- 
kind at  all  points,  and,  absorbing  the  light  of  his  time,  gave 
it  forth  a  hundred-fold,  so  Donne,  withdrawn  almost  entirely 
from  the  influences  aff"ecting  his  contemporaries,  shone  and 
glowed  with  a  strange  light  all  his  own.  Orthodoxy  —  or 
rather  a  restoration  to  orthodoxy  —  as  to  John  Donne  de- 
mands that  we  recognize  him  in  his  poetry  as  an  Elizabethan, 
as  strictly  such  as  Shakespeare,  far  more  so  than  Jonson; 
that  while  we  grant  Donne  to  be  a  concettist  he  was  such  from 
the  originality  and  natural  bias  of  his  min^  not  from  afi'ected 
singularity  or  a  striving  after  effect;  that  his  strange  and 
fascinating  poetry,  so  caviare  to  the  general,  yields  a  true  and 
rich  reward  to  him  who  will  seek  with  labor  and  true  faith; 
and,  lastly,  that  Donne,  next  to  Spenser  and  Jonson,  exercised 
the  most  potent  influence  of  his  time  on  English  poetry. 
Donne's  highest  contribution  to  literature,  like  Shakespeare's 
in  a  very  different  way,  depends  on  that  deeper  element  of 
modern  poetry  which  we  call  poetic  insight^  a  power  in  his 
case  which,  proceeding  by  means  of  the  clash  of  ideas  familiar 
with  ideas  remote,  flashes  light  and  meaning  into  what  has 
hitherto  appeared  mere  commonplace.  No  one,  in  short, 
excepting  Shakespeare,  with  Sidney,  Greville,  and  Jonson  in 
lesser  degree,  has  done  so  much  to  develop  igtellectualized^ 


THE  TRUE   PLACE  OF  DONNE  377 

emotion  in  the  Elizabethan  lyric  as  Donne.  In  comparison 
with  all  this  the  notions  about  a  "metaphysical  school,"  even 
a  "rhetorical  school  of  poetry"  and  the  fiction  of  a  fantastical 
prince  of  concettists,  leading  a  generation  of  poetlings  deliber- 
ately astray,  become  vagaries  of  criticism  comparatively 
unimportant.  Donne  deserves  the  verdict  of  his  friend,  Ben 
Jonson,  who  called  him  "the  first  poet  in  the  world  in  some 
things. "  But  Donne  is  the  last  poet  to  demand  a  proselyting 
zeal  of  his  devotees,  and  all  those  who  have  learned  to  love 
his  witching  personality  will  agree  to  the  charming  sentiment 
of  his  faithful  adorer,  Izaak  Walton,  when  he  says:  "Though 
I  must  omit  to  mention  divers  persons,  .  .  .  friends 
of  Sir  Henry  Wotton;  yet  I  must  not  omit  to  mention  of  a 
love  that  was  there  begun  betwixt  him  and  Dr.  Donne,  some- 
time Dean  of  Saint  Paul's;  a  man  of  whose  abilities  I  shall 
forbear  to  say  anything,  because  he  who  is  of  this  nation,  and 
pretends  to  learning  or  ingenuity,  and  is  ignorant  of  Dr, 
Donne,  deserves  not  to  know  him. " 


CHAPTER  XX 

DRAMA  AT  THE  UNIVERSITIES,  THE  PASTORAL 
DRAMA  AND  THE  MASQUE 

FROM  Chaucer's  time  to  Spenser's,  English  poetry  owed 
most  to  the  court.  This  we  have  seen  in  various  lyri- 
cal forms,  in  fiction,  and  in  the  pastoral,  to  name  no  more. 
The  old  sacred  drama  had  in  it  much  of  the  folk;  but  when 
modern  drama  arose  to  succeed  it,  the  first  influences  were 
those  that  belonged  specifically  to  the  society  that  surrounded 
the  sovereign;  and  however  soon  these  were  rivaled  and  sur- 
passed by  the  larger  utterances  of  the  popular  drama  they 
continued  to  develop  in  their  own  way,  and  what  is  more,  to 
exert  a  decided  influence  on  the  popular  drama  besides.  Thus 
Lyly  was  tutor  to  the  young  Shakespeare  in  comedy;  Peele 
transferred  his  talents  from  the  college  and  the  court  to  the 
boards  of  the  London  playhouses;  and  Kyd,  a  satellite  revolv- 
ing in  an  outer  orbit  of  the  charmed  Sidneian  circle,  fur- 
nishe<l  popularized  Senecan  tragedy  to  the  same  stage.  It  is 
the  business  of  this  chapter  to  trace  the  drama  as  it  flourished  at 
court  after  the  time  of  Lyly,  and  to  treat,  in  connection  with 
this,  the  academic  drama  which  in  nature  is  of  close  kindred. 
Scarcely  anything  secularly  dramatic  in  England  is  as  old 
as  the  practice  of  the  performance  of  Latin  plays  at  schools 
and  colleges.  It  was  out  of  this  custom  that  such  a  play  as 
Ralph  Roister  Doister  came  to  be  written  and  perhaps  Gammer 
Gurton  as  well;  for  the  substitution  of  an  original  play,  Latin 
or  English,  was  an  obvious  enough  departure  from  the  older 
acting  of  a  comedy  of  Terence  or  Plautus.  These  perform- 
ances were  early  used  to  celebrate  important  occasions  and 
came  to  be  a  recognized  feature  of  royal  progresses  and  enter- 
tainments of  other  important  personages.  Thus  in  the  year 
of  Shakespeare's  birth,  when  Elizabeth  visited  Cambridge, 
she  was  regaled  not  only  with  "scholastical  exercises  in  phil- 

378 


ELIZABETHAN  COLLEGE  PLAYS  379 

osophy,  physics,  and  divinity,"  but  with  comedies  and  trage- 
dies at  night  "set  forth  partly  by  the  whole  university  and 
partly  by  the  students  of  King's  College. "  Similar  festivities 
attended  the  queen's  visit  to  Oxford,  two  years  later,  and 
many  a  forgotten  name,  such  as  Preston,  Edwards,  Gager, 
and  Legge,  has  been  preserved  in  the  complaisant  accounts 
of  these  old  theatrical  revels.  Among  men  to  become  known 
to  the  stage,  Peele  began  his  career,  as  we  have  seen,  in  college 
plays  at  Oxford;  and  Nash  narrowly  escaped  expulsion  from 
Cambridge  for  a  libelous  Latin  comedy.  A  satirical  quality 
is  almost  invariably  characteristic  of  the  college  play.  The 
satire  is  for  the  most  part  dependent  on  the  close  and  intimate 
relations  of  college  life  and  it  assumed  familiarity,  as  it  had 
a  ri^ht  to  do,  with  the  classical  education  in  vogue  at  the  time 
and  smacks,  at  times  to  excess,  of  the  school  and  the  commons. 
A  famous  play,  Pedantius,  of  Cambridge  in  the  early  eighties, 
obtrudes  an  absurd  Ciceronian  (by  some  believed  a  take-off 
on  Gabriel  Harvey)  into  the  midst  of  a  comedy  of  Plautine 
intrigue;  and  Bellum  Grammaticale,  a  contemporary  piece  at 
Oxford,  elaborates  after  a  medieval  model  an  ingenious  alle- 
gory of  the  parts  of  speech.  At  other  times  the  immemorial 
feud  between  town  and  gown  becomes  the  subject  of  dramatic 
treatment  as  in  the  now  lost  Cluh  Law,  at  Cambridge,  in  which 
certain  townsmen  were  forcibly  compelled  to  view  themselves 
outrageously  lampooned  in  their  own  costumes,  which  had 
been  previously  borrowed  by  the  mischievous  collegians  with 
that  nefarious  end  in  view. 

Among  strictly  Elizabethan  academic  plays  none  are  more 
prominent  or  interesting  than  the  trilogy  known  as  "the 
Parnassus  plays,"  the  work  of  an  unknown  author  and  acted 
at  St.  John's  College,  Oxford,  in  the  interval  covered  by  the 
years  1598  to  1602.  The  first  of  these  is  entitled  The  Pil- 
grimage to  Parnassus.  It  details  the  career  of  a  couple  of 
youths  in  their  journey,  by  way  of  the  well-known  trivium, 
through  "the  island  of  logique,"  "the  pleasant  groves  of 
rhetorique,"  and  the  harsher  climate  of  philosophy,  until 
they  reach  "the  laurel  shady  grove"  upon  Parnassus'  top. 
They  are  not  without  adventures  by  the  way  with  the  tavern- 


38o  DRAMA  AT  THE   UNIVERSITIES 

er,  the  Puritan,  and  other  typical  personages  of  college  life. 
This  production  is  not  much  more  than  an  interlude  in  length. 
But  it  was  received  so  well  that  in  a  second  part,  The  Return 
from  Parnassus,  the  author  undertook  a  far  more  elaborate 
presentation  of  "the  progress  of  learning  towards  a  settlement 
in  life"  in  which  he  represents  the  same  heroes,  seeking  pre- 
ferment and  rebuffed  and  abused  on  every  hand.  In  a  final 
play,  the  second  part  of  The  Return  from  Parnassus,  the 
theme  is  still  further  amplified,  and  abuses  of  bribery  and 
favoritism  in  the  presentations  of  church  livings  are  held  up 
to  the  light.  The  disheartening  moral  is  that  there  is  no  place 
for  merit  and  learning  in  this  world,  unless  both  be  supported 
by  station,  wealth,  or  at  least  by  sycophancy.  Incidentally 
these  comedies  exhibit  several  typical  figures  cleverly  satirized, 
such  as  Gullio,  the  fool  of  fashion  and  patron  of  the  poets, 
whose  cheerful  and  impudent  appropriation  of  the  verses  of 
other  men's  making,  especially  Shakespeare's,  attests  both 
the  great  poet's  repute  and  the  attitude  of  the  superior  young 
collegians  towards  his  poetry.  Gullio  is  exhibiting  to  Iijgen- 
ioso  his  "vein  in  courting": 

Gullio.  Pardon,  fair  lady,  though  sick-thoughted  Gullio  makes 
amain  unto  thee,  and  like  a  bold-faced  suitor  'gins  to  woo  thee. 

Ingentoso  {aside).  We  shall  have  nothing  but  pure  Shakespeare 
and  shreds  of  poetry  that  he  hath  gathered  at  the  theaters. 

Gull.  Pardon  me,  moi  mittressa,  ast  am  a  gentleman,  the  moon 
in  comparison  with  thy  bright  hue  a  mere  slut,  Antony's  Cleopatra 
a  black-browed  milk-maid,  Helen  a  dowdy. 

Ingen.  {aside),  Mark,  Romeo  and  Juliet!  O  monstrous  theft! 
I  think  he  will  run  through  a  whole  book  of  Samuel  Daniel's. 

Gull.     Thrice  fairer  than  myself —  thus  I  began  — 
The  god's  fair  riches,  sweet  above  compare. 
Stain  to  all  nymphs,  more  lovely  than  a  man. 
More  white  and  red  than  doves  and  roses  are! 
Nature  that  made  thee  with  herself  had  strife, 
Saith  that  the  world  hath  ending  with  they  life. 

Ingen.     Sweet  Master  Shakespeare! 

Gull.     As  I  am  a  scholar. 
These  arms  of  mine  are  long  and  strong  withal, 
Thus  elms  by  vines  are  compassed  ere  they  fall. 


THE   PARNASSUS   TRILOGY  381 

Ingen.  Faith,  gentleman,  your  reading  is  wonderful  in  our 
English  poets! 

Gull.  Sweet  mistress,  I  vouchsafe  to  take  some  of  their  words 
and  apply  them  to  mine  own  matters  by  scholastical  invention. 
Report  then  upon  thy  credit;  is  not  my  vein  in  courting  gallant  and 
honorable  ? 

It  may  be  surmised  from  the  allusions  of  these  plays  that 
these  "young  sprouts  of  Apollo"  regarded  Venus  and  Adonis 
as  the  work  on  which  chiefly  rested  the  contemporary  fame  of 
Shakespeare.  It  was  Ovidian  in  subject  and  manner,  and 
it,  like  Lucrece,  had  been  published  by  the  regular  channels 
and  becomingly  dedicated  to  lordship.  Of  the  dramas,  they 
were  not  quite  so  sure.  The  popular  actors,  Burbage  and 
Kemp,  are  represented  among  the  characters  in  the  last  of 
these  plays,  and  doubtless  their  appearance  and  their  manner- 
isms of  speech  and  action  were  divertingly  mimicked  then  as 
our  popular  actors  are  at  times  mimicked  by  the  collegians 
of  to-day.  But  though  the  world  was  ringing  with  the  tri- 
umphs of  Shakespeare  and  Jonson,  the  acknowledgment 
of  their  superiority  is  put  into  the  ignorant  mouth  of 
Kemp,  the  morris-dancer,  in  the  certainly  satirical  words: 
"Few  of  the  university  pen  plays  well;  they  smell  too  much 
of  that  writer  Ovid,  and  that  writer  Metamorphosis,  and 
talk  too  much  of  Proserpina  and  Jupiter.  Why  here 's 
our  Shakespeare  puts  them  all  down,  aye,  and  Ben  Jonson, 
too. 

Few  things  are  more  persistent  in  the  strictly  academic 
plays  than  their  employment  of  allegory.  The  minuteness 
of  the  parallels  in  the  old  Belhim  Grammaticale  would  do 
credit  to  Priscian  or  William  Lilly;  and  even  more  elaborate 
are  the  allegorical  details  o{  Lingua,  a  fluently  written  comedy 
by  one  Tomkins  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  often  acted 
and  in  print  by  the  year  1607.  Therein  the  tongue  is  appro- 
priately conceived  as  a  feminine  personage  possessed  of  the 
aggressiveness  and  activity  of  a  modern  "suff'ragette,"  who 
demands,  for  herself,  full  recognition  as  one  of  the  senses. 
In  an  extraordinary  number  of  scenes  and  with  an  aston- 
ishing number  of  characters,  this  struggle  for  recognition  is 


382  DRAMA  AT  THE  UNIVERSITIES 

detailed  to  the  end  which  we  regret  to  say  was  Lingua's  dis- 
comfiture. The  age  of  James  was  not  the  twentieth  century. 
Lingua  is  an  ably  written  drama  and  full  of  ingenious  wit. 
It  may  be  recommended  to  the  reader  who  would  learn  how 
sumptuously  and  with  what  variety  the  personages  of  a  pri- 
vate play  were  costumed  in  these  old  times.  This  drama  of 
Lingua  was  acted  at  the  house  of  an  uncle  of  Oliver  Crom- 
well, in  1603,  to  welcome  King  James  on  his  progress  up  to 
London.  And  an  absurd  story,  of  later  cavalier  invention, 
makes  Oliver  himself  the  actor  who  impersonated  the  char- 
acter, Tactus;  and,  learning  in  the  play  what  it  was  to  wear  a 
crown,  he  bent  all  his  energies  thereafter  to  acquire  one. 
Oliver  was  four  years  old  in  1603. 

But  we  may  feel  sure  that,  except  on  grand  occasions 
when  the  colleges  were  visited  by  royalty,  the  academic  play 
was  a  much  simpler  affair.  A  pleasing  little  burlesque, 
called  Narcissus,  served  to  enliven  the  Christmas  festivities 
at  St.  John's  College,Oxford,  in  1602.  In  its  persons,  dialogue, 
and  setting  especially,  we  meet  with  as  frank  a  satire  on  con- 
temporary amateur  theatricals  as  is  Shakespeare's  represen- 
tation of  Bottom  and  his  "base  mechanicals"  of  The  Mid- 
summer-Night's Dream.  So,  too,  the  several  plays  of  1607 
at  the  same  college,  when  Oxford  seems  for  the  nonce  to  have 
gone  theatrically  mad,  were  performed  apparently  on  a  stage 
erected  in  the  refectory  by  pushing  the  tables  together;  and 
the  properties  were  the  fewest.  An  interesting  contemporary 
account  of  these  festivities  informs  us  of  the  whole  manner  of 
their  proceedings:  how  the  collegians  selected  a  Christmas 
prince  who  was  installed  with  egregious  solemnity  and  an 
appropriate  Latin  play;  how  tragedies  in  Latin  and  comedies 
for  the  younger  sort  in  English  were  devised,  rehearsed,  and 
acted;  and  of  their  troubles  in  rehearsal,  the  accidents  and 
triumphs  of  performances,  and  many  like  matters.  \Few  of 
these  lighter  amateur  productions  are  possessed  of  any  lit- 
erary, much  less  poetic,  merit.  The  one  dramatist  whose 
work  was  strictly  academic,  to  rise  to  literary  distinction,  was 
Thomas  Randolph,  and  he  belongs  to  the  reign  of  King 
Charles.     But   these    academic   productions   of  the   time    of 


LATIN  AND  ENGLISH  TRAGEDY  383 

Elizabeth  and  James  are  neither  without  their  value  nor  with- 
out a  deeper  interest  for  their  relations,  though  often  remote, 
to  their  sister  plays  on  the  popular  stage. 

Concomitantly  with  satiric  farce  and  allegory,  Latin 
tragedy,  with  its  imitation  in  English,  continued  to  flourish 
at  both  the  universities.  In  subject-matter  these  plays  were 
preferably  taken  from  classical  history  or  myth.  Two  of 
the  most  famous  Latin  tragedies  in  their  day  were  Roxana, 
1592,  the  work  of  William  Alabaster,  praised  for  his  poetry 
by  Spenser,  and  Nero  by  Dr.  Matthew  Gwinne,  printed  in 
1603.  This  latter  tragedy,  which  is  closely  written  and  of 
great  length,  is  rigorously  grounded  on  the  recognized  classical 
authorities  for  the  history  of  that  degenerate  Roman  emperor, 
and  owes  its  existence  as  completely  as  Jonson's  Sejanus  to 
Tacitus  and  Suetonius.  Alabaster's  Roxana,  on  the  other  hand, 
has  recently  been  discovered  to  be  little  more  than  a  translation 
of  one  of  the  dramas  of  the  Italian,  Luigi  Groto.  But  Italian 
sources  such  as  these  were  more  frequently  employed  by  the 
collegians  for  comedy  and  a  long  list  of  plays  —  few  of  them 
rising  above  mediocrity  —  can  be  made  out  for  both  colleges, 
levying  on  what  may  be  called  Plautus  Italianized.  Such  a 
play,  to  name  only  one,  is  Lcelia,  1590,  a  translation  of  GVIn- 
gatinati  of  Giovanni  della  Porta  and  a  suggested  source  of 
Shakespeare's  Twelfth  Night;  another  translation  from  the 
same  Italian  dramatist  is  Tomkins'  Alhumazor,  1615,  which 
Dryden  mixed  up  for  want  of  information  as  to  its  source  with 
Jonson's  Alchemist;  a  third  is  the  celebrated  Ignoramus,  by  far 
the  most  popular  of  all  the  academic  comedies  of  its  time. 
Ignoramus  is  the  work  of  George  Ruggle.  The  plot,  which 
is  far  from  wanting  either  in  cleverness  or  wit,  revolves  about 
the  character  who  supplies  the  title  and  whose  coarse  scheming, 
blundering,  and  jargon  of  dog  Latin,  bad  English,  and  law 
French  proclaim  him  the  very  embodiment  of  blatant,  militant 
Philistinism.  Ignoramus  was  acted  for  the  first  time  at  Cam- 
bridge before  James  in  1615  with  a  cast  chosen,  so  Oxford 
hinted,  with  at  least  as  much  care  to  the  social  relations  of 
the  actors  as  to  their  histrionic  abilities;  and  its  success  with 
King  James  (who  journeyed  up  to  Cambridge  a  second  time 


384  THE   PASTORAL   DRAMA 

to  see  the  comedy  repeated)  was,  we  fear,  as  much  due  to  its 
broad  obscenities  as  to  any  designed  encouragement  of  learn- 
ing and  the  arts  that  governed  the  purposes  of  that  learned 
monarch. 

Further  into  the  strictly  academic  drama  our  present 
design  does  not  lead  us.  In  Gwinne's  Nero,  English-Latin 
tragedy  reached  its  height;  Ignoramus  was  surpassed  in  wit 
and  in  decency  by  many  following  plays.  The  restrictive 
sphere  of  satire  and  allusion  in  such  plays  lent  little  to  the 
popular  comedy  of  manners  which  had  long  since  outstripped 
it.  The  restrained  and  narrow  rhetoric  of  Senecan  tragedy 
was  equally  a  thing  of  the  past  on  the  stage  of  London.  On 
the  other  hand,  plays  at  college  were  open  from  the  first  to 
outside  influences,  more  especially  those  of  the  court  than  to 
those  of  the  popular  drama.  Of  the  court  influences  on  the 
academic  drama  the  most  important  by  far  was  pastoral; 
and  we  turn  now  to  the  consideration  of  pastoral  drama  during 
the  period  of  this  book. 

It  will  be  recalled  that  in  a  previous  chapter  a  succession 
of  literary  fashions,  so  to  speak,  was  noted  as  characteristic 
of  the  latter  half  of  Elizabeth's  reign.  There  was  the  time  of 
the  sonnet,  for  example,  and  that  when  lyrics  were  more 
specifically  written  to  be  set  to  music.  Preceding  both  of 
these  was  the  period  of  the  pastoral,  which  tinged  with  its 
artificial  ideals  and  its  preciosity  nearly  every  form  of  current 
literature.  OThus  the  pastoral  is  rather  a  way  of  viewing  nature 
and  reproducing  it  in  art  than,  in  any  strict  sense,  a  variety 
of  literature,  much  less  a  form  of  poetry.  Quite  enough  has 
been  said  of  the  origin  of  the  pastoral  in  the  chapter  which 
deals  with  its  lyric  form.  In  the  pastoral,  be  it  remembered 
(lest  we  become  critical  where  criticism  is  unfair),  we  leave 
the  actual  world  behind  us  to  hark  back  to  that  golden  age 
so  besung  by  the  poets,  to  dwell  in  the  land  where  all  swains 
are  lovers  and  all  nymphs  are  fair;  where  their  work  is  the 
knotting  of  rushes  or  the  piping  of  melodies,  their  play,  the 
prettiest  of  innocent  love-making  —  but  who  knows  not 
Arcadia,  though  his  life  may  no  more  have  compassed  it  than 


"THE  SAD  SHEPHERD"  385 

his  lips  have  tasted  the  springs  of  Helicon  or  his  feet  attempted 
the  steeps  of  Parnassus  ? 

In  Italy  the  step  from  pastoral  romance  to  pastoral  drama 
was  soon  taken  by  Tasso,  whose  Aminta,  acted  in  1573,  was 
translated  by  Englishmen  in  the  eighties;  twenty  years  later 
came  Guarini's  //  Pastor  Fido.  But  well  before  either  of 
these  famous  regular  pastoral  dramas,  English  poets  had 
employed  the  pastoral  notion  in  masque-like  devices  and  enter- 
tainments. Gascoigne  used  such  figures  among  others  in  his 
speeches  to  Queen  Elizabeth  at  Kenilworth  in  1575, and  Sidney 
in  his  Lady  of  May,  three  years  later,  gives  us  a  lively  little 
pastoral  interlude.  In  Peek's  court  play,  The  Arraignment  of 
Paris,  and  equally  in  several  of  the  dramas  of  Lyly,  we  have 
a  pastoral  atmosphere  breathed  by  the  gods  of  Greece  and 
Rome,  incongruous  to  none  but  a  classical  purist  who  has 
forgotten  intervening  history.  But  in  such  a  drama  as  Lyly's 
Lovers  Metamorphosis,  the  manners  are  pure  Arcadia.  The 
pastoral  as  an  element  entered  into  English  comedies  in  other 
combinations.  A  "court  element,"  as  it  has  been  called, 
combines  with  the  pastoral  in  certain  well-known  plays;  such, 
for  example,  as  Mucedorus,  an  exceedingly  popular  little 
comedy,  attributed  to  Lodge.  In  the  inferior  Thracian  fVon- 
der,  much  as  in  Sidney's  Arcadia,  the  combination  of  the 
pastoral  is  with  the  heroic.  More  interesting  is  the  contrast 
of  ideas  that  arises  from  a  combination  of  the  conventions  of 
the  Italian  pastoral  with  the  English  ideal  of  free  rural  life, 
embodied  in  the  tales  of  the  doings  of  Robin  Hood.  Such  a 
drama  as  this  Ben  Jonson  had  in  mind  in  the  fragment  of 
The  Sad  Shepherd,  written  we  may  feel  certain,  whatever  the 
date,  at  least  after  the  regular  English  pastoral  plays,  of  which 
more  shortly.  Here  a  tale  of  Robin  and  his  Maid  Marian  is 
intenvoven  with  one  of  ^glamour,  Mellifleur,and  Amie,  names 
redolent  with  the  pastoral  ideals;  and  huntsmen  and  shepherds 
rub  against  Puck-Hairy  and  the  Witch  of  Paplewick.  The 
robust  English  nature  of  Jonson  could  never  have  realized 
the  rococo  landscape  of  Arcadia  or  the  tinted  shepherdesses 
that    dwell    simperingly   therein.     In    less    striking   contrast, 


386  THE  PASTORAL  DRAMA 

these  two  elements  appear  once  more  in  As  you  Like  It.  The 
ultimate  source  of  Shakespeare's  plot,  as  is  well  known,  is 
the  medieval  Tale  ofGamelyn,  a  plain  English  story  of  outlawry 
and  vengeance.  Into  it  there  enters  no  woman's  figure;  and, 
in  the  end,the  unjust  eldest  brother  is  slain  and  the  two  younger 
divide  the  estate.  Lodge  translated  the  story  from  England 
to  the  Arcadian  forest  of  Ardenne,  transformed  "the  maister 
outlawe"  to  the  banished  King  of  France,  turned  Gamelyn 
into  the  romantic  lover,  Rosader,  and  invented  Rosalynd  to 
match  him,  conveying  a  group  of  shepherds  and  shepherdesses 
into  the  forest  for  the  human  setting.  Lodge's  Rosalynd  is 
more  truly  pastoral  than  any  play  of  Lyly.  Shakespeare  in 
As  Tou  Like  It  restored  the  English  setting  and  introduced 
his  veritable  English  country,  folk,  Audrey  and  William,  beside 
the  pastoral  figures  of  Silvius  and  Phoebe;  using  pastoral 
love-making  in  the  delicious  wooing  of  Orlando  and  Rosalind 
only  for  delightful  burlesque.  As  Tou  Like  It  is  no  true  pas- 
toral; and  no  more  readily  than  Jonson,  could  the  free  romantic 
spirit  of  Shakespeare  be  bound  within  the  conventions  of  a 
form  of  literature  so  exotic  and  conventional. 

We  reach  now  by  process  of  elimination  the  slender  pro- 
ducts of  the  true  pastoral  drama  in  England.  They  consist 
of  scarcely  more  than  a  half-dozen  English  plays  within  the 
lifetime  of  Shakespeare,  only  two  of  them,  Daniel's  Queens 
Arcadia  and  John  Fletcher's  Faithful  Shepherdess,  ranking 
really  high  as  poetry.  Indeed,  if  we  except  The  Sad  Shepherd 
of  Jonson,  we  must  look  forward  to  the  Amyntas  of  Randolph, 
a  product  of  the  revival  of  pastoral  drama  in  the  reign  of  King 
Charles,  for  a  play  to  match  these  two  in  its  kind.  Of  Samuel 
Daniel  and  his  work  as  one  of  the  earliest  of  the  sonneteers, 
pastoralists,  and  writers  of  narrative  poetry,  we  have  heard 
above.  It  was  in  1605  that  The  Queen's  Arcadia  was  acted 
at  Christ  Church  College,  Oxford  before  Anne,  the  queen  of 
King  James.  Daniel,  as  we  know,  had  visited  Italy;  and, 
while  there,  had  met  Guarini,  author  of//  Pastor  Fido.  This 
famous  pastoral  drama  is  Daniel's  direct  inspiration,  and  the 
English  poet  has  preserved  with  a  fidelity,  complete  but  by 
no  means  slavish,  the  atmosphere  and  general  milieu  of  the 


"THE  QUEEN'S  ARCADIA"  387 

pastoral.  The  story,  which  involves  no  very  original  intrigue, 
sets  forth  the  usual  pastoral  figures,  illustrating  love  in  its 
various  phases  and  relations.  But  Daniel  introduces,  not 
without  success,  a  corrupt  returned  traveler  and  "a  subtle 
wench  of  Corinth"  who  complicate  the  plot  and  offer  a  happy 
foil,  alike  to  the  superlative  virtue  and  the  excessive  gravity 
of  the  pastoral  folk.  A  fair  specimen  of  Daniel's  Arcadian 
style  may  be  caught  from  the  following  lament: 

O  Silvia,  if  thou  needs  wouldst  have  been  gone, 

Thou  shouldst  have  taken  all  away  of  thee; 

And  nothing  left  to  have  remain'd  with  me. 

Thou  shouldst  have  carried  hence  the  portraiture 

Which  thou  hast  left  behind  within  my  heart, 

Set  in  the  table-frame  of  memory. 

That  puts  me  still  in  mind  of  what  thou  wert, 

Whilst  thou  wert  honest,  and  thy  thoughts  were  pure; 

So  that  I  might  not  thus  in  every  place. 

Where  I  shall  set  my  careful  foot,  confer 

With  it  of  thee,  and  evermore  be  told, 

That  here  she  walked,  and  lean'd  upon  mine  arm; 

There  gathered  flowers,  and  brought  them  unto  me; 

Here  by  the  murmurs  of  this  rustling  spring, 

She  sweetly  lay,  and  in  my  bosom  slept; 

Here  first  she  showed  me  comforts  when  I  pined; 

As  if  in  every  place  her  foot  had  stept. 

It  had  left  Silvia  in  a  print  behind. 

As  to  the  comedy  of  relief,  it  is  in  The  Queens  Arcadia 
that  the  well-known  descant  upon  tobacco  occurs,  a  passage 
tuned  to  a  nicety  to  the  ear  of  the  royal  author  of  A  Counter- 
blast to  Tobacco.  After  telling  of  the  source  of  this  "herb 
wrapped  up  in  rolls  from  the  island  of  Nicosia"  and  describing 
how 

This  in  powder  made,  and  fired,  he  sucks 
Out  of  a  little  hollow  instrument 
Of  calcinated  clay,  the  smoke  thereof: 
Which  either  he  conveys  out  of  his  nose, 
Or  down  into  his  stomach  with  a  whifF; 


388  THE   PASTORAL  DRAMA 

he  continues  of  the  Arcadians,  that  in   place  of  their  former 
pleasant  festivals  and  meetings: 

Now  do  they  nothing  else  but  sit  and  suck, 
And  spit  and  slaver  all  the  time  they  sit, 
That  I  go  by  and  laugh  unto  myself. 

That  men  of  sense  could  ever  be  so  mad 
To  suck  so  gross  a  vapor  that  consumes 
Their  spirits,  spends  nature,  dries  up  memory. 
Corrupts  the  blood,  and  is  a  vanity. 

As  yet  there  had  been  no  attempt  to  popularize  the  true 
pastoral  drama,  although  several  comedies  since  the  time  of 
Lyly  had  disclosed  pastoral  elements,  in  addition  to  those 
already  mentioned,  especially  John  Day's  Isle  of  Gulls  and 
Humor  out  of  Breath.  The  first  is  a  sprightly  little  piece, 
founded  on  an  episode  of  Sidney's  Arcadia,  but  converting 
the  heroic  tone  of  the  original  into  satire  and  raillery.  Humor 
out  of  Breath,  while  containing  several  charming  scenes  of  a 
pastoral  nature,  is  otherw^ise  free  from  the  conventions  of  the 
type.  These  comedies  belong  respectively  to  1605  and  a 
couple  or  more  years  after.  It  must  have  been  about  1608 
that  Fletcher  staged  his  poetic  pastoral  drama,  The  Faithful 
Shepherdess.  According  to  the  author's  own  account  the 
play  was  a  failure  on  the  popular  boards;  and  in  a  preface 
"To  the  Reader,"  when  the  drama  came  to  print,  Fletcher 
justifies  his  scheme  and  makes  it  plain  that  he  accepted  the 
pastoral  conventions  in  their  integrity.  In  the  story  the 
faithful  shepherdess  is  Clorin  who,  her  lover  having  died,  has 
set  up  a  bower  near  his  grave  wherein  she  lives  the  life  of  an 
anchoress  and  practises  simple  arts  of  healing.  She  is  assisted 
in  her  work  by  a  gentle  satyr  on  whose  original  nature  devotion 
to  this  pure  mistress  has  wrought  a  miracle.  .  .  .  Clorin 
is  sought  in  love  by  Thenot,  whom  she  gently  but  firmly 
refuses,  and  at  last  repulses  completely  by  a  momentary  pre- 
tense of  yielding;  for  it  was  Clorin's  constancy,  not  Clorin, 
that  Thenot  adored.  Amoret,  unkindly  wounded  by  her 
lover,  Perigot,  who,  practised  on,  has  thought  her  false,  is 
brought  by  the  satyr  to  Clorin  for  cure;  and  so,  too,  is  Alexis, 


"THE  FAITHFUL  SHEPHERDESS"         389 

justly  wounded  by  a  sullen  shepherd  on  account  of  Cloe, 
a  light-o'-love.  All  these  and  other  shepherds  and  shepherd- 
esses are  cured  or  reclaimed  in  the  end  by  the  holy  anchoress, 
who  continues  faithful  to  her  dead  love.  Into  the  allegory 
alleged  by  some  to  underlie  this  story  it  is  unnecessary  to 
inquire.  The  lapses  from  decorum  w^hich  stain  this  otherwise 
beautiful  poem  are  doubtless  best  explained  by  the  method 
of  contrast  which  Fletcher  invoked  in  his  earlier  plays  with 
Beaumont  and  carried  at  times  to  excess.  In  execution  and 
within  the  limits  of  its  artificial  kind,  The  Faithful  Shepherdess 
leaves  little  to  criticism.  It  became,  despite  its  first  failure, 
exceedingly  popular  on  the  stage  and  was  admired  by  gen- 
erations of  poets.  One  need  not  turn  far  into  its  pages  to 
find  how  much  even  Milton  owed  to  it.  The  octosyllables 
given  to  the  gentle-natured  satyr  are  always  particularly 
musical.  Thus  he  offers  his  forest  treasures  to  Clorin  his 
benefactress: 

Here  be  grapes,  whose  lusty  blood 

Is  the  learned  poet's  good. 

Sweeter  yet  did  never  crown 

The  head  of  Bacchus;   nuts  more  brown 

Than  the  squirrel's  teeth  that  crack  them; 

Deign,  O  fairest  fair,  to  take  them! 

For  these  black-eyed  Dr}-ope 

Hath  oftentimes  commanded  me 

With  mv  clasped  knee  to  climb: 

See  how  well  the  lusty  time 

Hath  decked  their  rising  cheeks  in  red, 

Such  as  on  your  lips  is  spread! 

Here  be  berries  for  a  queen, 

Some  be  red,  some  be  green; 

These  are  of  that  luscious  meat. 

The  great  god  Pan  himself  doth  eat: 

All  these,  and  what  the  woods  can  yield, 

The  hanging  mountain  or  the  field, 

I  freely  offer,  and  ere  long 

Will  bring  you  more,  more  sweet  and  strong. 

In   The    Winter's    Tale  will   be   found   some   of  the   most 
exquisite  outdoor  scenes  in  our  drama.     But  they  are  pastoral 


390  THE   PASTORAL  DRAMA 

only  in  the  sense  that  they  deal  with  shepherds  and  their  life. 
Greene's  prose  tale  of  Pandosto,  the  source,  Is  more  pastoral 
than  these  scenes,  and  the  atmosphere  of  the  rest  of  the  play 
is  that  of  the  court.  The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  rare  comedy 
of  Robert  Daborne  called  The  Poor  Mans  Comfort,  1613. 
This  pretty  romantic  play,  which  has  been  almost  completely 
forgotten,  departs  from  one  of  the  long  accepted  conventions 
of  romance  to  leave  the  heroine  a  shepherdess,  and  no  princess, 
even  in  the  end.  In  1614  Daniel  returned  to  the  pastoral 
drama  with  Hymen  'j  Triumph,  a  shorter,  maturer  work 
though  scarcely  equaling  the  more  elaborately  planned  Queen  s 
Arcadia.  Hymen  s  Triumph  was  acted  before  their  majesties 
on  the  occasion  of  a  noble  wedding.  The  demands  of  such 
an  event  gave  to  Daniel's  play  much  the  sumptuousness  in 
performance  of  the  masque.  It  is  written  throughout  in  that 
admirable  English  diction  that  earned  for  the  author  in  his 
own  day  the  sobriquet  "well-languaged  Daniel."  The  con- 
tinued touch  of  the  pastoral  with  the  universities  is  shown  in 
a  strange,  but  interesting  and  far  from  unpoetical,  production 
called  Sicelides,  the  work  of  Phineas  Fletcher,  author  of  The 
Purple  Island,  and  intended  for  performance  before  the  king 
at  Cambridge  in  16 15.  Sicelides  is  a  piscatory  comedy  in 
which  fisher-folk  take  the  place  of  the  shepherds  of  the  pastoral. 
This  was  quite  orthodox,  at  least  on  the  example  of  the  pis- 
catory eclogue,  a  variety  of  the  pastoral  neither  unknown  to 
Sannazaro  nor  to  Theocritus  himself.  The  pastoral  drama 
seems  to  have  fallen  into  disfavor  about  this  time.  At  least 
there  are  few,  even  inferior,  specimens  until  the  revival  of  the 
mode,  some  ten  years  later,  in  the  reign  of  King  Charles. 
Jonson's  admirable  fragment  of  a  pastoral  play  has  already 
been  mentioned.  The  Sad  Shepherd  was  never  finished  and 
never  staged.  In  it,  as  in  so  many  of  his  works,  Jonson  ap- 
pears to  have  come  into  direct  rivalry  with  Daniel,  who  was 
again  and  again  the  butt  of  Jonson's  ridicule.  It  seems  not 
unreasonable  to  believe  The  Sad  Shepherd  a  production  of 
about  this  period  and  that  it  was  written  to  emulate  the  suc- 
cess of  Hymen  s  Triumph  rather  than  long  before  or  (what 
is  still  more  improbable)  after  all  his  immediate  competitors 


THE   MASQUE   DEFINED  391 

for  the  favor  of  the  court  had  ceased  to  write  dramas  of  this 

kind. 

Masking  in  the  sense  of  revelry,  taking  more  or  less  a 
dramatic  form,  is  as  old  in  England  as  the  drama  itself  The 
masque,  as  a  specific  variety  of  entertainment  at  court  or 
among  the  nobility,  was  a  development  of  the  latest  years  of 
Elizabeth's  reign  and  the  time  of  James.  Moreover,  had  it 
not  been  for  the  peculiar  talents  of  Ben  Jonson  and  the  con- 
junction with  him  of  Inigo  Jones,  the  royal  architect  and 
ingenious  designer  of  scenery  and  stage  devices,  the  history 
of  the  English  masque  would  have  been  far  shorter  and  poorer. 
In  the  restrictive  sense  of  the  word  with  which  we  are  alone 
concerned,  a  masque  may  be  defined  as  a  setting,  lyric,  scenic, 
and  dramatic,  for  a  court  ball.  It  is  an  entertainment  into 
which  songs,  dialogue,  action,  music,  scenery,  and  costume  all 
enter;  but  the  nucleus  is  always  a  dance.  The  precise  lan- 
guage of  the  day,  for  example,  recognized  in  the  "entertain- 
ment" a  similar  amplification  of  the  speech  of  welcome,  and 
in  the  w^ord  "barriers,"  a  mock  tournament,  embellished 
w^ith  dialogue  and  action.  Moreover,  an  examination  of  the 
works  of  the  age  will  disclose  an  accurate  use  of  these  terms. 
In  the  masque,  from  the  first,  a  distinction  was  drawn  between 
"the  masquers,"  as  they  were  called,  and  the  professional 
assistants  in  music,  dancing,  and  acting.  The  masquers  ranged 
from  eight  to  sixteen,  and  were  the  titled  people  of  the  court. 
They  were  handsomely  attired  and  grouped  in  positions 
.heightened  by  scenic  arrangement  and  mechanical  contri- 
vance; but  little  save  the  creation  of  an  imposing  show  was 
expected  of  them.  As  the  masque  developed,  it  was  soon 
found  necessary  to  enlist  the  services  of  professional  actors 
and  singers  for  the  presentation  of  the  more  premeditated 
parts.  But  care  was  taken  not  to  bring  these  people  into 
touch  with  the  masquers.  As  to  the  parts  of  the  masque, 
there  was  first  the  appearance  of  the  masquers,  with  their 
march  or  descent  from  their  "sieges"  or  sea*  of  state  in  the 
scene,  and  their  first  dance:  all  this  was  called  the  "entry"; 
then  there  was  the  "main"  or  principal  dance.  All  up  to 
this    was    planned    and    premeditated.     Then    followed    two 


392  THE  JACOBEAN  MASQUE 

extemporal  parts," the  dance  with  the  ladles"  and  the  "revels," 
the  latter  made  up  of  galliards,  lavoltas,  and  corantos.  Lastly, 
there  was  the  closing  march  or  "going  out.  "  That  the  masque 
is  a  purely  exotic  by-form  of  the  drama,  derived  mainly  #ither 
from  Italy  or  from  France,  can  hardly  be  held  in  view  of  the 
long  preparation  for  it  in  the  annals  of  the  festivities  at  the 
English  court;  but  that  foreign  influences  affected  its  nature 
and  the  course  of  its  development  in  England  is  not  to  be 
denied. 

The  earliest  examples  of  a  masque  fulfilling  the  technical 
conditions,  mentioned  above,  are  to  be  found  in  the  account 
of  the  festivities  known  as  the  Gesta  Grayorum,  "betwixt  All- 
Hollantide  and  Christmas,''  1594.  This  is  the  most  elaborate 
"Christmassing"  recorded,  and  its  solemnities  included  a 
complete  royal  mock  court  with  all  the  ceremonials  thereof: 
feastings,  dancing,  dramas,  masques,  and  what  not.  Of  the 
three  masques  of  the  Gesta  Grayorum,  the  Masque  of  Proteus 
presages  nearly  all  the  elements  subsequently  to  be  so  highly 
developed  in  the  next  reign.  This  production  was  the  work 
of  two  well-known  young  men,  Francis  Davison,  editor  a  few 
years  later  of  the  last  of  the  lyrical  anthologies,  The  Poetical 
Rhapsody,  and  Thomas  Campion,  the  musician  and  lyrist. 
This  masque  is  important  only  for  its  historical  position. 
It  involved  an  obvious  enough  compliment  to  the  queen,  who 
is  likened  to  "the  adamantine  rock"  that  draws  all  hearts. 

With  the  accession  of  Elizabeth's  successor,  a  new  impetus 
was  given  to  masquing  and  entertainments  of  every  kind. 
The  king's  progress  up  to  London  and  through  the  metropolis 
to  his  court  was  one  continued  scene  of  welcome  in  which  the 
"entertainment"  in  its  technical  sense  was  resorted  to  again 
and  again.  The  chief  rival  poets,  on  the  way,  were  Jonson 
and  Daniel;  and  the  latter  in  his  Vision  of  the  Twelve  God- 
desses, acted  in  January,  1604,  presented  the  first  of  the  noble 
series  of  court  masques  which  grace  the  annals  of  King  James. 
Daniel's  masque  is  everything  that  a  masque  should  be  except 
dramatic.  That  want  Jonson  supplied  in  his  Masque  of 
Blackness  a  year  later,  adding  a  wealth  and  richness  of  poetic 
imagination  and  ingenuity  of  detail  that  placed  him,  at  once 


UNIVERSITY    ] 

OF  J 

'^^^^^^I^^^^^ARLIER  MASQUES  OF  JONSON  393 

without  a  rival,  the  accepted  entertainer  of  the  court.  This 
is  not  the  place  in  which  to  list  Ben  Jonson's  masques.  His 
activity  in  this  respect  continued  for  thirty  years  during  which 
he  put  forth  nine  entertainments,  three  barriers,  two  anti- 
masques  and  no  less  than  two-and-twenty  masques  proper, 
some  of  them  of  extraordinary  completeness.  Jonson  wrote 
more  than  three  times  as  many  masques  as  all  his  competitors 
—  Campion,  Daniel,  Beaumont,  Chapman,  Marston,  and 
Browne  —  together;  and  their  quality  in  general  may  com- 
pare to  advantage  with  the  best.  In  Hymenal,  wherein  Jon- 
son used  his  notion  of  the  humors  and  affections  issuing  from 
the  microcosm  or  globe  figuring  a  man,  in  the  admirably 
startling  contrasts  of  the  fine  Masque  of  Queens,  in  The 
Golden  Age  in  which  Pallas  turns  the  Iron  Age  and  all  his 
attendant  evils  into  statues,  and  in  Pleasure  Reconciled  to 
Virtue  (wherein  the  character  Comus  may  have  been  sug- 
gested to  Milton),  we  have  examples  of  the  poetic  beauty, 
dramatic  aptitude,  inventive  ingenuity^  and  resourcefulness 
that  make  Jonson  the  great  master  of  the  masque. 

All  of  these  masques  were  sumptuously  "furnished"  and 
ingeniously  staged  by  the  skill  of  Inigo  Jones.  In  Hymenoei 
gigantic  golden  figures  of  Atlas  and  Hercules  were  the  support- 
ers of  the  scene;  in  the  Viscount  Haddington's  Masque,  1608, 
golden  pilasters,  "charged  with  spoils  and  trophies,  .  .  .all 
wrought  round  and  bold  "  supported  "  overhead  two  personages, 
Triumph  and  Victory,  in  flying  postures  and  twice  as  large  as 
the  life,  in  place  of  the  arch,  and  holding  a  garland  of  myrtle 
for  a  key. "  This  framing  of  the  scene,  utterly  in  contrast  with 
the  practice  of  the  popular  stage,  was  frequent  thereafter. 
In  The  Masque  of  Queens,  "an  ugly  hell  .  .  .  flaming 
beneath,  smoked  unto  the  top  of  the  roof,"  and  afforded  the 
setting  for  the  antimasque  of  witches.  Novelty  and  surprise 
was  carefully  preconcerted  for  the  moment  of  the  appearance 
of  the  masquers,  who  were  attired  with  a  variety  and  splendor 
of  costume  that  readily  explains  the  extravagant  cost  of  these 
spectacles.  At  times  the  masquers  were  "discovered"  sitting 
in  a  glittering  temple,  or  seated  in  "a  great  concave  shell"; 
at  others  they  descended  from  the  clouds,  or  emerged  from 


394  THE   JACOBEAN  MASQUE 

"a  microcosm  or  globe."  This  last  is  described  as  "filled 
with  countries  and  those  gilded;  where  the  sea  was  expressed, 
heightened  with  silver  waves.  This  stood,  or  rather  hung 
(for  no  axle  was  seen  to  support  it),  and  turning  softly  dis- 
covered the  first  masque."  Landscapes  and  especially  the 
sea  were  again  and  again  represented,  the  waves  in  motion, 
with  Tritons  and  sea-horses  "bigger  than  life"  among  them, 
and  even  ships,  sailing  to  and  fro.  Careful  effects  were  those 
of  light  and  clouds  "made  artificially  to  swell  and  ride  like 
the  rack,"  and  the  moon  in  a  "heaven,  vaulted  with  blue  silk 
and  set  with  ati^rs  of  silver  which  had  in  them  several  lights. " 
Even  the  modern  Wagnerian  device  of  the  rise  of  steam  to 
obscure  a  part  of  the  scene  was  not  unknown  to  these  ingenious 
performances;  and  there  it  was  further  refined,  after  a  classical 
precedent,  into  "a  mist  of  delicate  perfumes.  " 

Not  the  least  service  that  Jonson  rendered  to  the  masque 
was  the  development  of  its  dramatic  capabilities  in  the  element 
of  relief.  This  was  called  the  antimasque  and  was  always 
entrusted  to  professional  hands.  Thus,  in  The  Masque  of 
Queens,  the  antimasque  is  a  bevy  of  witches  grotesquely  con- 
trasted with  the  beautiful  queens  that  follow.  Mercury  Vin- 
dicated from  the  Alchemists  opens  with  a  vivacious  scene  in 
which  that  volatile  deity  escapes  from  the  furnace  of  Vulcan 
and  "imperfect  creatures  with  helms  and  limbecks  on  their 
heads"  figure  in  the  dances;  and  in  Love  Restored  the  scene 
opens  with  a  satiric  little  sketch  of  the  difficulties  that  a  plain 
man  experiences  in  gaining  access  to  these  spectacles.  In 
two  of  Jonson's  works  of  this  kind  the  antimasque  has  usurped 
the  whole  scene  and  the  masque  proper  fallen  out  of  existence 
For  example,  The  [Jnt{]masque  of  Christmas  introduces  that 
personage  of  good  cheer  with  his  sons  and  daughters,  Carol, 
Wassel,  and  Minced-pie;  and  the  later  Gipsies  Metamorphosed 
is  a  humorous  if  vulgar  rendering  of  a  bit  of  actual  low  life, 
appreciated  by  the  king  to  Jonson's  enrichment  for  the  same 
reason  that  his  majesty  so  hugely  enjoyed  Ignoramus. 

Jonson's  activity  in  the  masque  carries  us  well  over  into 
the  time  of  Charles.  But  there  were  other  notable  masques 
of  the  days  of  King  James  as  well  as   Jonson's.     In   1610 


THE  GRAND  MASQUES  OF   1613  395 

Daniel  furnished  Tethys'  Festival  for  which  Inigo  Tones  de- 
vised no  less  than  three  changes  of  scenery.  Novel  features 
of  this  masque  were  Daniel's  attempt  to  restrict  the  performers 
in  it  to  "great  personages,"  and  its  extraordinary  cost,  reck- 
oned at  ;^i6oo,  more  than  double  Jonson's  previous  masque 
of  that  year,  Love  Free' J  from  Ignorance.  In  1613  three 
masques  of  unprecedented  grandeur  were  furnished  by  nobles 
and  by  gentlemen  of  the  Inns  of  Court  to  grace  the  marriage 
of  the  Princess  Elizabeth  to  the  Palsgrave.  The  first  of  these 
was  The  Lords'  Masque  by  Campion.  The  scene  changed 
four  times  and  the  masquers  were  stars  and  golden  statues 
called  to  life.  Chapman's  masque,  which  followed  the  next 
day,  was  presented  by  the  gentlemen  of  the  Middle  Temple 
and  Lincoln's  Inn  and  exhibited  the  novel  departure  of  a 
sumptuous  procession  to  the  masquing  place  by  land,  in  which 
appeared  cars  triumphal  and  a  cavalcade  attended  by  two 
hundred  halberdiers,  all  gorgeously  attired.  Chapman's  work 
is  over-elaborate  and  its  effect  could  not  have  been  otherwise 
than  tedious.  The  third  grand  masque  for  this  wedding  was 
that  of  Beaumont,  presented  by  the  gentlemen  of  the  Inner 
Temple  and  Gray's  Inn.  This  was  to  have  been  preceded  by 
a  water  pageant,  planned  to  move  up  the  Thames  from  Win- 
chester House  in  a  gallant  flotilla  with  music,  torches,  and  the 
booming  of  ordnance.  But  this  plan  was  only  partially  car- 
ried out,  as  even  the  Jacobean  powers  of  endurance  in  pleasure 
gave  out  on  this  third  consecutive  day  of  masquing  and  feasting. 
Beaumont's  masque  was  performed,  however,  a  few  days 
later,  and  with  the  success  which  its  poetic  merit  deserved. 
It  is  of  interest  to  recall  that  Beaumont  offered  this  masque 
in  his  capacity  of  a  member  of  the  Inner  Temple,  not  as  a 
notable  WTiter  for  the  popular  stage  (a  thing  that  he  was  con- 
tent to  conceal);  and  secondly  that  Sir  Francis  Bacon,  then 
solicitor-general,  was  chiefly  responsible  for  the  expenses  of 
its  furnishing.  Another  masque  on  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
Bacon  is  said  to  have  expended  ;f2000  was  the  Masque  of 
Flowers,  1614,  the  work  of  three  gentlemen  of  Gray's  Inn. 
Among  Jacobean  masques,  those  of  Campion  are  conspicuous 
for  the  care  which  the  author  bestowed  on  the  music  both 


396  THE   JACOBEAN  MASQUE 

vocal  and  instrumental,  A  masque  of  poetical  quality  and 
—  for  the  masque  —  of  singular  coherency  of  plot  is  that 
of  William  Browne,  entitled  Ulysses  and  the  Sirens,  1615. 
The  masque  continued  to  rise  in  expense  and  sumptuousness 
until  it  became  in  the  next  reign  an  impoverishment  to  the 
royal  purse  and  a  scandal  to  the  serious  minded. 

As  to  the  nature  of  the  Jacobean  masque,  its  oldest  inher- 
itance was  allegory,  which  it  derived  directly  from  the  morality 
and  the  allegorical  devices,  long  in  vogue  in  previous  courts. 
But  the  allegory  of  the  morality  was  ingenious  and  didactic; 
that  of  the  masque  was  artistic  and  eulogistic,  and  by  the 
necessities  of  the  case  modeled  on  simpler  lines.  To  the 
cultivated  people  of  the  court,  suggestion  was  commonly 
sufficient,  and  as  Jonson  well  put  it,  "a  writer  should  trust 
somewhat  to  the  capacity  of  the  spectators,  especially  in  these 
spectacles;  where  men,  besides  inquiring  eyes,  are  understood 
to  bring  quick  ears,  and  not  those  sluggish  ones  of  porters  and 
mechanics,  that  must  be  bored  through  with  narratives." 
The  Jacobean  masque  abounds,  as  might  be  expected,  in 
classical  and  mythological  personages,  imagery,  and  allusion. 
This  was  no  affectation  in  an  age  in  which  education  came  to 
men,  and  women  too,  chiefly  by  means  of  the  classics.  Jon- 
son's  ancient  lore  stood  him  in  good  stead  in  his  masques;  but 
he  by  no  means  escaped  the  pedantry  of  classical  reference 
and  learned  quotation,  a  weakness  which  Daniel  and  others 
v/ere  quick  to  see  and  caustically  report.  Neither  coherency 
nor  anything  like  unity  of  design  can  be  said  ever  to  have 
distinguished  the  masque,  and  even  satire  —  except  for  cer- 
tain personal  lampoons  in  the  antimasquing  parts  of  Jonson's 
work  —  was  kept  decorously  in  leash  in  the  royal  presence. 
In  a  consideration  of  the  masque  it  must  be  remembered  that 
this  was  only  the  most  highly  elaborated  of  a  large  variety  of 
like  entertainments  that  signalized  almost  every  important 
social  function  of  the  day.  Speeches  of  welcome  and  fare- 
well; pageants,  interludes,  and  processions;  Maying,  Christ- 
massing,  and  wassailing;  sham  tournaments,  mock  courts 
with  all  their  ceremonials  —  such  were  the  incessant  pleasures 


THE  MASQUE  AND  THE   POPULAR  STAGE    397 

of  the  day.  For  example,  the  lord  mayor  was  installed  with 
elaborate  pageantry  year  after  year.  More  than  thirty  of 
these  productions  between  the  years  1580  and  1629  remain 
extant  to  disclose  the  character  of  this  civic  pageantry,  and 
some  of  the  "shows"  are  by  the  hands  of  the  best  poets  of 
their  time,  Peele,  Munday,  Dekker,  Middleton,  Marston,  and 
Shirley.  Even  Jonson's  activity  was  not  wholly  absorbed 
by  the  court. 

That  the  popular  stage  should  reflect  this  fashion  of  the 
day  was  in  the  very  nature  of  things.  Nearly  all  the  drama- 
tists who  wrote  in  the  reign  of  James  employ  the  elements  of 
the  masque  more  or  less  organically  in  plays.  To  mention 
only  Shakespeare,  there  is  an  antic-dance  of  satyrs  in  The 
Winter  s  Tale  and  a  betrothal  masque  in  The  Tempest,  in- 
volving an  antimasque  of  "strange  shapes";  while  into  Cym- 
helirie  has  been  thrust  a  "dream"  with  Jupiter  descending 
"on  an  eagle,"  a  paltry  stage  device  which  only  a  contemporary 
demand  for  such  stuff  could  justify  or  excuse.  A  more  impor- 
tant matter  is  the  more  general  effect  which  the  extravagant 
and  ingenious  settings  of  masques  at  court  must  have  had  on 
the  plays  of  the  London  theaters.  It  seems  impossible  to 
believe,  as  some  have  believed,  that  the  popular  stage  was 
little  affected  by  the  devices  of  Inigo  Jones.  That  an  alert 
and  captious  audience  such  as  that  of  Shakespeare,  in  his 
later  days,  should  have  remained  content  with  bare  boards, 
when  the  court  plays  were  set  handsomely  in  perspective  and 
with  change  of  scene,  is  altogether  defiant  of  the  probabilities. 
There  must  certainly  have  been  under  the  influences  of  such 
examples  a  gradual  improvement  alike  in  the  staging  and  the 
costuming  of  popular  dramas,  although  the  precise  degree 
of  this  change  must  remain  a  matter  indeterminable.  And 
yet  the  college  plays,  the  pastoral  drama,  and  the  masque 
remain  exotic  and,  at  least  during  the  lifetime  of  Shakespeare, 
without  the  direct  current  of  drama  that  flowed  from  Marlowe 
to  Shirley;  the  first  because  of  the  collegian's  uninformed  and 
conscious  attitude  of  superiority  towards  the  popular  drama, 
together  with  the  tradition  that  perpetuated  the  following  of 


398  THE   JACOBEAN  MASQUE 

ancient  models  or  their  Italian  imitations,  the  pastoral,  because 
its  conventional  ideals  mark  the  antithesis  of  the  English  con- 
ception of  free  country  life;  and  lastly  the  masque,  for  its 
restriction  to  the  entertainment  of  royalty  and  because,  in  its 
thoughtless  pursuit  after  novelty  and  its  wanton  expense  and 
display,  the  drama  evaporated  out  of  it. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

SHAKESPEARE    AND    THE    NEW    DRAMA    OF 
FLETCHER 

IN  any  history  of  the  literature  or  poetry  of  the  times  of 
Elizabeth  and  James,  the  drama  must  bulk  large,  not 
only  because  of  Shakespeare,  Jonson,  and  the  rest,  but  because 
in  no  other  literary  form  of  that  age  was  expression  so  untram- 
meled  and  life  capable  of  representation,  both  so  faithfully 
and  so  ideally.  In  the  previous  pages  we  have  endeavored 
to  represent  this  drama  in  its  sudden  rise  from  the  immaturities 
of  the  first  plays  in  regular  dramatic  form  to  the  height  of 
comedy  in  Dekker,  Shakespeare,  and  Jonson,  and  the  sum- 
mation of  tragedy  in  Marlowe,  Shakespeare,  and  Webster. 
We  have  been  more  concerned  with  the  variety  of  Elizabethan 
drama  in  its  range  —  from  the  dainty  cleverness  of  Lyly  or 
the  poetic  fancy  of  Dekker  to  the  imaginative  fulness  of 
Shakespearean  comedy,  from  the  actualism  of  Arden  or  the 
melodrama  of  Kyd  to  the  passionate  idealism  of  Juliet  or  the 
mastery  of  terror  which  Lear  or  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  depict 
—  than  we  have  been  concerned  with  individual  authors  in 
the  integrity  of  their  careers.  The  group  of  dramatists 
popularly  known  as  Shakespeare's  predecessors  fell  early 
out  of  the  race.  Dekker,  Chapman,  Jonson  and  Middleton, 
who  began  writing  in  the  middle  nineties,  all  continued  to 
write  after  Shakespeare's  death,  although  the  distinctive  work 
of  every  one  of  them  falls  strictly  within  his  lifetime.  Mars- 
ton,  Webster,  and  Tourneur  condensed  their  shorter  dramatic 
careers  into  a  period  almost  coincident  with  the  last  ten  years 
of  Shakespeare's  life.  So  that  of  the  great  Elizabethans  in 
the  drama  that  remain  —  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Masslnger, 
Ford,  and  Shirley  —  only  the  last  three  are  strictly  post- 
Shakespearean.  Beaumont  was  always  an  amateur,  and  he 
gave  up  writing  for  the  stage  early.  The  triumphs  that  gave 
to  Fletcher  the  succession  to  Shakespeare's  primacy  were  made 

399 


400  SHAKESPEARE  AND   FLETCHER 

/before  the  latter's  death.     In  the  present  chapter  our  concern 

!  is  with  the   relations   and   characteristics   of  Beaumont  and 

\  Fletcher  as  dramatists,  with  the  Fletcherian  dramatic  departure 

I  called  tragicomedy  and  its  bearings  on  the  group  of  Shake- 

yspeare's    plays    known    as    "dramatic    romances."     It    was 

'A  tragi  comedy,  in  the  hands  of  Fletcher,  that  developed  a  new 

Variety  of  the  romantic  drama  which  was  potently  to  affect 

Avhat  came  after;  for  it  is  in  his  plays  that  we  meet,  almost  for 

/the  first  time,  the  exaggerated  romanticism  that  led  through 

^successive  steps  in  the  next  reign  to  the  heroic  play  of  Dave- 

nant  and  Dryden. 

While  it  is  obvious  that  no  actual  combination  of  tragic 
and  comic  elements  could  justify  so  contradictory  a  term  as 
tragicomedy,  the  word  was  employed  by  writers  of  the  time  of 
James  to  denote  a  romantic  drama  involving  serious  passion, 
yet  ending  happily:  and  such  plays  speedily  acquired  an 
extraordinary  popularity.  Tragicomedy  is  not  necessarily 
melodrama,  but  it  easily  degenerates  into  such.  Its  dangers 
are  false  sentiment  and  perverted  ethics;  and  it  is  liable  to 
sacrifice  the  logic  of  events  to  dramatic  surprise.  The  truest 
tragicomedy  is  that  in  which  the  circumstances  of  the  drama 
and  its  clash  of  personalities  are  such  that  the  outcome  is 
naturally  uncertain.  The  Merchant  of  Venice  trembles  in 
the  balance  between  tragedy  and  comedy  in  the  supreme  scene 
of  the  trial,  and  only  Shylock's  final  hesitancy  to  accept,  with 
his  own  destruction,  a  full  and  final  revenge  preserves  the 
drama  within  the  latter  category. 

Of  John  Fletcher  we  have  already  heard  in  this  book  as 
a  writer  of  comedies  in  the  manner  of  Middleton  and  as  the 
author  of  a  poetical  pastoral  drama,  The  Faithful  Shepherdess. 
Fletcher  was  born  in  1579,  the  son  of  Richard  Fletcher,  Dean 
of  Peterborough  and  later  Bishop  of  London.  The  bishop's 
brother  was  Giles  Fletcher,  author  of  the  sonnet-sequence, 
Ltcia,  and  both  his  sons,  Giles  the  Younger  and  Phineas 
Fletcher  have  found  their  place  in  the  pages  above  as  followers 
of  the  Spenserian  allegorized  pastoral.  John  Fletcher,  the 
dramatist,  thus  came  of  a  notable  and  literary  family.  He 
attended  Bene't  College,  Cambridge,  as  a  pensioner  in  1591; 


FLETCHER  AND  BEAUMONT  401 

and,  as  a  younger  son,  received  no  patrimony  except  a  part 
of  his  father's  Hbrary.  Much  praised  and  esteemed  by  his 
contemporaries  and  frequently  mentioned  for  his  poetry,  we 
know  surprisingly  Httle  what  manner  of  man  Fletcher  was, 
and  his  relations  to  his  fellows,  Shakespeare,  Beaumont, 
Massinger,  and  the  rest,  are  vague  and  derivable  for  the  most 
part  by  inference.  The  custom  of  Fletcher's  age  habitually 
associated  his  name  with  that  of  Francis  Beaumont,  a  man 
five  years  his  junior,  of  much  the  same  station  in  life,  but  of 
whom  we  know  rather  more.  Beaumont  was  likewise  a 
younger  brother.  His  father  was  Sir  Francis  Beaumont  of 
Grace  Dieu  in  Lancashire,  a  justice  of  the  Common  Pleas. 
Young  Beaumont  received  his  education  at  Broadgate's  Hall, 
Oxford,  where  he  was  admitted  a  gentleman  commoner  in 
1597,  and  at  the  Inner  Temple,  for  which  society  we  have 
already  found  him  writing  a  masque  under  the  patronage  of 
Sir  Francis  Bacon.  We  do  not  know  when  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  became  intimate;  not  unlikely  it  was  through  the 
acquaintance  of  each  with  Ben  Jonson,  who  drew  to  himself 
alike  from  his  convivial  habits,  his  geniality,  and  his  learning 
and  poetry,  the  Bohemian  spirits  of  his  day,  and  held  them 
in  allegiance  at  the  Mermaid  and  later  in  the  famous  Apollo 
room  of  the  Devil  Tavern.  We  are  certain  that  there  was 
personal  friendship  and  collaboration  betvveen  Fletcher  and 
Beaumont;  and  we  are  equally  sure  that  the  publication,  in 
the  folio  of  1647,  of  the  collected  plays  of  the  former  with 
those  in  which  the  latter  had  shared,  has  had  the  effect  of 
giving  greater  weight  to  this  association  than  is  at  all  warranted 
by  the  facts.  In  this  very  volume  we  may  feel  sure  that  there 
are  more  than  twice  as  many  plays  in  which  Fletcher's  col- 
laborator or  reviser  was  Philip  Massinger.  And  when  it  is 
recalled  that  Beaumont  died  a  young  man  in  1616,  just  a 
month  before  Shakespeare,  while  Fletcher  continued  an 
active  dramatist  up  to  his  death  by  the  plague  nearly  ten  years 
later,  enough  has  been  said  to  make  patent  that  the  expression, 
"the  plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,"  applied  to  any  large 
body  of  dramas  in  which  the  latter  had  a  hand,  is  a  pure  mis- 
nomer. 


402  SHAKESPEARE  AND  FLETCHER 

The  most  conspicuous  difference  between  these  two  authors 
consists  in  the  fact  that  Fletcher  was  a  professional  dramatist; 
Beaumont  was  not.  Beaumont  does  not  appear  to  have 
sanctioned  the  publication  of  any  of  his  works,  his  name  ap- 
pearing during  his  lifetime  only  on  the  title  of  his  Masque  of 
the  Inner  Temple  and  Gray's  Inn.  It  seems  not  improbable 
that  the  two  young  men  began  authorship  independently, 
Fletcher  in  that  direct  picturing  of  London  life  that  we  asso- 
ciate with  the  name  of  Middleton;  Beaumont  in  a  closer  fol- 
lowing of  Jonson's  comedy  of  humors  to  which  he  added  a 
quality  of  burlesque  all  his  own.  Beaumont,  it  has  been 
surmised,  first  wrote  for  the  Children  of  Paul's  from  about 
1604  to  1606  or  1607,  Fletcher's  earliest  unaided  work  being 
for  the  Children  of  his  Majesty's  Revels.  Li  1 6 10  both  authors 
were  writing  for  the  King's  company,  having  brought  with 
them  work  previously  written  together.  Tradition  relates 
that  Beaumont's  part  in  this  collaboration  was  advisory  and 
critical;  and  even  Ben  Jonson,  his  senior  by  ten  years,  addressed 
him  enthusiastically  in  an  epigram  beginning:  "How  I  do 
love  thee,  Beaumont,  and  thy  Muse,"  and  elsewhere  with  a 
deference  surprising  in  a  man  of  Jonson's  temper.  However, 
it  is  not  to  be  questioned  that  Beaumont  did  more  than  advise 
and  criticize  in  some  of  the  dramas  attributed  to  him  and 
Fletcher  in  their  immortal  partnership.  Indeed,  without  the 
charmed  Shakespearean  circle,  there  is  no  question  of  criticism 
relating  to  Elizabethan  drama  that  has  been  so  much  argued 
and  exploited.  Into  its  niceties  the  purposes  of  this  book  can 
not  demand  that  we  enter.  But  this  much  must  be  said,  for 
Beaumont  falls  entirely  within  our  period,  however  the  Flet- 
cherian  plays  at  large  may  extend  beyond  it.  A  consideration 
of  work  which  we  have  reason  to  believe  only  Beaumont's 
discloses  —  according  to  the  critics  —  that  he  was  the  truer 
Elizabethan,  that  is,  his  was  the  higher  artistic  earnestness.- 
A  genius  for  tragedy,  a  deeper  insight  into  character,  especially 
in  the  realization  of  the  nature  of  his  women,  a  power  of  pathos, 
a  breadth  of  humor  and  good-natured  satire  —  all  these  things 
are  posited  of  the  younger  dramatist.  While  in  contrast, 
Fletcher  is  accused  of  a  want  of  artistic  seriousness,  allowed 


FLETCHER  AND  BEAUMONT  403 

to   possess  "a   pretty,   playful   fancy,"   abundant  wit   but   a 
lighter  quality  of  humor,  and  a  more  superficial  insight  into 
human    nature    and    conduct.     Fletcher's    genius    is    clever, 
ready,  and  ofF-hand,  but  often  careless  and  morally  irrespon- 
sible:    and  the  styles  of  the  two  men  bear  out  this  contrast. 
Beaumont,  after  the  custom  of  the  older  dramatists,  employs 
prose  and  rime  at  times  to  vary  his  blank-verse,  the  phrasing 
of  which  exhibits  a  moderate   freedom  not  unlike  the  self- 
contained  and  more  carefully  wrought  verse  of  Jonson.     Beau- 
mont is,  moreover,  as  careful   as   Jonson  himself  as   to  the 
numbering  of  his  syllables,  seldom  admitting  a  redundancy  to 
alter  the  strict  decasyllabic  character  of  his  lines. 
Presumptuous  Iris,  I  could  make  thee  dance, 
Till  thou  forgott'st  thy  lady's  messages, 
And  ran'st  back  crying  to  her.     Thou  shalt  know 
My  power  is  more;   only  my  breath  and  this 
Shall  move  fix'd  stars,  and  force  the  firmament 
To  yield  the  Hyades,  who  govern  showers 
And  dewy  clouds,  in  whose  dispersed  drops 
Thou  form'st  the  shape  of  thy  deceitful  bow. 

In  contrast  with  these  lines  from  Beaumont's  Masque,  we 
may  take  these  opening  words  of  BonJuca,  as  unquestionably 
Fletcher's  in  his  confirmed  later  manner: 

The  hardy  Romans!   oh,  ye  gods  of  Britain! 

The  rust  of  arms,  the  blushing  shame  of  soldiers! 

Are  these  the  men  that  conquer  by  inheritance  ? 

The  fortune-makers  ?  these  the  Julians, 

That  with  the  sun  measure  the  end  of  nature, 

Making  the  world  but  one  Rome  and  one  Caesar  ? 

Shame,  how  they  flee!     Caesar's  soft  soul  dwell's  in  'em, 

Their  mothers  got  'em  sleeping.  Pleasure  nursed  'em; 

Their  bodies  sweat  with  sweet  oils,  love's  allurements. 

Not  lusty  arms. 

Here  all  is  in  contrast.  The  style  is  easy  and  rapid;  the  con- 
struction loose,  cumulative,  and  at  times  rambling;  the  verse 
distinguished  by  an  incessant  use  of  redundant  syllables, 
commonly  at  the  end  of  each  line,  transmuting  the  usual 
measure  of  ten  syllables  to  one  habitually  of  eleven  with  a 


404  SHAKESPEARE  AND  FLETCHER 

pause  at  the  end  of  each  Hne.  To  speak  technically,  the 
hendecasyllabic  verse  end-stopped  is  characteristic  of  Fletcher 
as  it  is  characteristic  of  no  other  poet  within  the  range  of 
English  letters;  and  out  of  this  departure  in  dramatic  verse, 
Fletcher  made  not  only  a  novel,  but  a  remarkably  success- 
full  and  adaptable  medium  for  the  conveyance  of  dramatic 
dialogue. 

With  these  criteria  of  contrast,  scholars  have  portioned 
out  the  parts  of  those  plays  which,  from  their  dates  or  for 
other  reasons,  may  be  supposed  to  be  the  work  of  both  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher,  with  a  further  corrective,  referable  to  a 
later  revision  in  some  cases  by  Massinger.  The  last-named 
dramatist  does  not  concern  us,  as  his  work  falls  beyond  our 
period.  In  general  it  may  be  said  that  these  tests  of  author- 
ship are  satisfactory;  but  it  is  easy  to  exaggerate  their  impor- 
tance and  to  forget  that  after  all  joint  authorship,  in  a  product 
like  a  play,  means  the  presence  of  both  authors  throughout, 
or  we  can  expect  no  such  unity  as  even  these  Elizabethan 
productions  often  present.  The  present  writer  professes  a 
profound  distrust  of  the  glib  assignments  of  scenes,  passages, 
and  lines  to  given  authors  and  given  periods  of  their  activity; 
and  he  believes  that,  in  the  Beaumont-FIetcher-Massinger 
group  of  plays,  Beaumont  has  been  assigned,  in  general, 
rather  too  large  a  part,  and  Massinger  much  too  subtly  traced. 

With  King  James  a  few  years  on  his  throne,  the  taste  of 
the  time  had  undergone  certain  changes  and  modifications. 
While  we  can  hardly  say  that  men  had  surfeited  of  tragedy, 
at  least  they  had  become  less  fond  of  that  strong  wine,  or 
rather,  of  the  wholesome  drug  in  shape  of  a  moral  application 
which  it  frequently  involved;  and  they  preferred  to  go  home 
pleased  rather  than  thoughtful.  Again,  the  new  performances 
at  court,  called  masques,  suddenly  developed,  as  we  have  seen, 
into  extraordinary  cost  and  splendor,  and  the  popular  stage 
was  immediately  affected.  The  craving,  too,  and  demand  for 
novelty  strained  the  drama  in  every  direction  to  make  the 
realistic  more  actual  and  coarse,  the  romantic  more  extrav- 
agant and  unnatural;  to  deepen  the  motives  of  passion  and 
crime,  if  such  were  possible,  and  lighten  comedy  into  greater 


"PHILASTER" 


405 


frivolity,  farce,  and  fantasticality.  /At  this  juncture  came 
Fletcher,  one  of  the  cleverest  playwrights  in  the  range  of 
letters,  to  combine  the  courage  of  the  innovator  with  a  ready 
aptitude  for  seizing  the  occasion.  The  result  was  the  invention 
of  a  new  kind  of  romantic  drama,  founded  on  contrast  and 
heightened  situation,  which  proceeded  with  great  rapidity  of 
action  and  was  carried  on,  to  a  certain  degree,  by  means  of 
personages  more  or  less  presented  in  types.  This  novel 
drama  he  served  in  the  new,  lithe,  and  supple  variety  of  blank- 
verse  described  above,  so  colloquial  that  it  did  away  with  the 
necessity  of  interlarded  prose  and  yet  retained  the  power  to 
become  eminently  poetical  at  need. 

The  typical  play  of  this  new  class  is  Philaster,  referred  to 
in  an  epigram  of  Davies  of  Hereford  in  1610,  and  the  work 
of  both  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  Philaster  abounds  in  con- 
trasts. There  is  first  the  usurping  king  and  the  true  prince 
Philaster,  in  his  role  as  the  true  lover  and  as  a  noble  gentleman, 
also  set  off  against  the  ignoble  voluptuary,  Prince  Pharamond. 
Both  are  suitors  to  the  peerless  princess,  Arethusa,  whose 
steadfastness  and  pure  love  is  thrown  into  relief  as  compared 
with  the  wanton  conduct  of  her  waiting-woman,  Megra;  and 
whose  love,  requited  by  Philaster,  is  once  more  contrasted 
with  the  pathetic,  unrequited  devotion  of  the  page,  Bellario, 
who  serves  Philaster  and  aids  him  in  his  courtship  of  Arethusa, 
though  actually  a  maiden  devotedly  in  love  with  him.  We 
have  here  a  drama  of  sentimental  interest  thrust  into  the 
midst  of  elements  heroically  tragic.  The  action  is  swift, 
full  of  event  and  of  varied  emotion;  and  the  personages  are 
governed  by  prearranged  ruling  qualities  from  first  to  last. 
Types  are  the  result.  Philaster  gave  to  the  drama  the  heroic 
but  unreasoning  hero;  the  blunt,  out-spoken  soldier;  the  dis- 
consolate and  love-lorn  maiden;  and  the  semi-comic  poltroon. 
None  the  less  Philaster  is  in  many  respects  an  admirable 
drama  and  deserving  of  the  popularity  that  it  long  enjoyed. 
Its  novelty  must  have  been  startling  in  its  time;  and  while  the 
heroic  conception  of  some  of  its  characters,  especially  the 
prince,  has  given  him  an  irrational  inconsistency  and  sapped 
somewhat  the  moral  basis  of  his  conduct,  the  poetry  of  the 


4o6  SHAKESPEARE  AND  FLETCHER 

play,  Its  sentiment  and  pathos,  are  worthy  of  all  the  praise 
that  they  customarily  receive.  The  source  of  Philaster  has 
not  been  discovered  by  the  indefatigable  seekers  in  the  quar- 
ries of  literature,  and  although  a  more  or  less  direct  influence 
of  the  Spanish  comedias  de  capa  y  espada  has  been  surmised, 
the  ingenious  plotting  of  Philaster  is  doubtless  the  invention 
of  the  authors. 

The  likelihood  of  this  origin  is  strengthened  when  we  find 
almost  the  same  range  of  material  employed  again  and  again 
with  ingenious  variety  to  repeat  the  same  effective  result. 
The  Maid's  Tragedy,  Cupid's  Revenge,  and  A  King  and  No 
King,  all  first  staged  between  1609  and  161 1,  are  plays  closely 
resembling  Philaster  in  plot,  construction,  style  and  char- 
acterization; and  further  examples  of  this  likeness  are  not  far 
to  seek  within  the  range  of  the  Beaumont-Fletcher-Massinger 
plays.  On  the  other  hand  these  general  likenesses  are  readily 
exaggerated.  The  Maid's  Tragedy  is  a  powerful  drama  in 
which  the  heroic  but  unreasoning  hero  becomes  the  bewildered 
and  unstable  Amintor;  and  the  evil  and  spiteful  trull,  Megra 
(in  Philaster),  is  replaced  by  the  tragic  figure  of  Evadne, 
wrought  to  evil  by  ambition  atoned  in  death.  In  A  King  and 
No  King,  correspondingly,  the  heroic  Philaster  is  replaced 
by  the  pseudo-king,  Arbaces,  intentionally  represented  as  a 
boaster  and  ignoble,  while  Spaconia,  who  corresponds  to  the 
love-lorn  maidens,  Euphrasia  and  Aspasia  of  the  other  two 
plays,  is  a  young  woman  of  resources  and  contrives  in  the  end 
to  keep  her  prince  for  herself. 

An  ingenious  theory,  which  has  recently  obtained  much 
currency  through  the  sanction  of  recognized  authority,^  ex- 
tends the  criteria  of  this  group  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  to 
the  later  work  of  Shakespeare.  This  theory  holds,  in  a  word, 
that  Shakespeare  was  seriously  afi'ected,  in  these  latest  ro- 
mances, by  the  new  Fletcherian  tragicomedy,  and  that  this 
influence  worked  to  the  detriment  of  Shakespeare's  art,  de- 
stroying especially  the  strong  lines  of  his  characterization  and 

^  See  especially  A.  H.  Tliorndike,  The  Influence  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  on  Shakespeare,  1901,  and  his  excellent  edition  of  The 
Maid's  Tragedy  and  Philaster,  1906. 


THE  "ROMANCES"  OF  SHAKESPEARE      407 

reducing  his  art  to  the  measure  of  the  man  he  imitated.  This 
theory  would  make  Imogen,  Hermione,  Perdita,  and  Miranda 
women  less  vital  than  their  elder  sisters  of  tragedy  or  comedy, 
and  regard  them  as  the  kindred  of  the  heroines  of  Fletcher. 
Now  if  the  list  of  Shakespeare's  plays  be  examined,  we  shall 
find  besides  the  clearly  defined  group  of  comedies,  histories, 
and  tragedies,  several  about  which  there  may  well  arise  a 
doubt  as  to  whether  they  belong  to  any  of  these  accepted 
categories.  Troilus  and  Cressida,  which  we  have  already 
considered,  is  a  problematic  drama,  too  serious  and  bitter 
for  comedy  yet  rising  neither  to  the  height  of  tragic  passion 
nor  disposing  of  its  dramatis  personae  in  death  to  expiate 
crime.  So,  too,  Timon  of  Athens,  though  it  concludes  with 
the  death  of  the  hero,  is  rather  a  biographical  narrative  dram- 
atized than  a  tragedy  as  that  term  is  ordinarily  employed. 
Timon  is  a  story  of  the  ancient  world;  and  perhaps  as  classically 
set  forth  as  we  could  expect  of  the  master  of  romantic  art, 
with  Painter's  Palace  of  Pleasure  as  an  immediate  model. 
But  Troilus  is  redolent  of  medieval  romance;  and  so  too  is 
Pericles,  doubtless  on  the  stage  by  1608.  In  short,  to  the 
three  dramas,  Cymheline,  The  Winter  s  Tale,  and  The  Tempest, 
usually  included  in  this  group  called  "dramatic  romances," 
we  may  add  Troilus,  Timon,  and  Pericles  before,  and  perhaps 
The  T%vo  Noble  Kinsmen,  if  Shakespeare  had  a  hand  in  it, 
after.  Common  characteristics  of  these  plays  are  considerable 
looseness  in  construction,  recalling  the  epic  qualities  of  the 
old  chronicle  plays;  far  less  strenuous  passion  than  that  of  the 
tragedies;  and  though  there  is  comedy  in  them  all,  merriment 
is  far  from  their  dominant  tone.  Once  more,  these  dramas 
delight  in  strange  lands  or  wanderings  over  unknown  seas, 
in  shipwreck  and  other  adventure,  in  children  and  kindred 
lost  or  estranged,  found  and  reconciled.  Moreover,  these 
dramas  at  times  trespass  imaginatively,  as  in  The  Tempest, 
on  the  supernatural.  It  may  be  noted  in  passing  that  these 
are  elements  altogether  distinguishable  from  the  courtly 
atmosphere  of  intrigue  and  the  incessant  dramatic  contrast 
of  the  Philaster  group.  / 

Pericles,  Prince  of  Tyre,  was  first  published  in  1609  and 


4o8  SHAKESPEARE  AND  FLETCHER 

went  through  five  quartos  before  it  was  collected  into  the  third 
folio  of  Shakespeare's  works  in  1664.  The  story  of  Apol- 
lonius  of  Tyre,  of  which  Pericles  is  a  dramatized  version,  is 
one  of  the  most  generally  diffused  in  fiction;  and  the  immediate 
sources  of  the  drama  appear  to  have  been  the  tale  as  told  by 
Gower  in  his  Confessio  Amantis,  and  the  prose  version  of 
Lawrence  Twine  in  his  Pattern  of  Painful  Adventures,  1576. 
The  circumstance  that  Pericles  was  not  included  in  the  first 
folio,  that  the  workmanship  is  exceedingly  unequal,  and  the 
text  corrupt  has  caused  doubt  to  be  cast  on  Shakespeare's 
sharing  in  it;  and  William  Rowley  and  George  Wilkins,  a 
minor  dramatist  who  published  a  novel  on  the  subject  about 
the  date  of  the  play,  have  been  named  as  Shakespeare's  pos- 
sible collaborators.  There  are  scenes  unmistakably  Shake- 
speare's, however,  in  Pericles,  no  matter  what  inferior  hand 
may  have  supplied  the  wooden  choruses  spoken  by  Gower, 
and  several  unworthy  scenes.  As  to  Shakespearean  quality, 
few  scenes  are  lovelier  than  that  in  which  the  distracted  Peri- 
cles, sunk  in  melancholy,  is  restored  to  his  faculties  by  the 
sweet  singing  of  his  own  lost  daughter. 

Pericles.     I  am  great  with  woe,  and  shall  deliver  weeping. 
My  dearest  wife  was  like  this  maid,  and  such  a  one 
My  daughter  might  have  been.     My  queen's  square  brows; 
Her  stature  to  an  inch;   as  wand-like  straight; 
As  silver-voic'd;    her  eyes  as  jewel-like 
And  cas'd  as  richly;   in  pace  another  Juno; 
Who  starves  the  ears  she  feeds,  and  makes  them  hungry, 
The  more  she  gives  them  speech.     Where  do  you  live .? 

Marina.     Where  I  am  but  a  stranger.     From  the  deck 
You  may  discern  the  place. 

Per.     Where  were  you  bred  ? 
And  how  achiev'd  you  these  endowments,  which 
You  make  more  rich  to  owe  ? 

Mar.     If  I  should  tell  my  history,  it  would  seem 
Like  lies  disdain'd  in  the  reporting. 

Per.     Prithee,  speak. 
Falseness  cannot  come  from  thee;   for  thou  look'st 
Modest  as  Justice,  and  thou  seem'st  a  palace 
For  the  crown'd  Truth  to  dwell  in.     I  will  believe  thee, 


"PERICLES,  PRINCE  OF  TYRE"  409 

And  make  my  senses  credit  thy  relation 
To  points  that  seem  impossible;   for  thou  look'st 
Like  one  I  lov'd  indeed.     What  were  thy  friends  ? 
Didst  thou  not  say,  when  I  did  push  thee  back  — 
Which  was  when  I  perceiv'd  thee  —  that  thou  cam'st 
From  good  descending  ? 
Mar.     So  indeed  I  did. 

And  so  the  beautiful  lines  run  on  to  the  joy  of  certainty: 
Per.     O  Helicanus,  strike  me,  honored  sir; 
Give  me  a  gash,  put  me  to  present  pain; 
Lest  this  great  sea  of  joys  rushing  upon  me 
O'erbear  the  shores  of  my  mortality. 

And  drown  me  with  their  sweetness.     O,  come  hither. 
Thou  that  beget'st  him  that  did  thee  beget; 
Thou  that  wast  born  at  sea,  buried  at  Tarsus, 
And  found  at  sea  again!     O  Helicanus, 
Down  on  thy  knees,  thank  the  holy  gods  as  loud 
As  thunder  threatens  us.     This  is  Marina. 

Now,  blessing  on  thee!    Rise,  thou  art  my  child. 
Give  me  fresh  garments.     Mine  own,  Helicanus; 
She  is  not  dead  at  Tarsus,  as  she  should  have  been, 
By  savage  Cleon.     She  shall  tell  thee  all; 
When  thou  shalt  kneel,  and  justify  in  knowledge 
She  is  thy  very  princess. 

All  this  and  much  more  of  Pericles  we  may  feel  assured  is  the 
very  Shakespeare. 

Pericles  may  be  said  to  unite  the  "romance"  with  the  tale 
of  adventure  as  Timon  touches  classical  story.  So  Cymheltne 
combines  the  apparently  discordant  elements  of  legendary 
chronicle  history  with  the  "romance."  Cymheline  was  first 
printed  in  the  folio  and  may  be  dated  about  1609.  The 
legendary  history  of  King  Cymbeline,  Shakespeare  derived 
from  his  habitual  source,  Holinshed's  Chronicles,  the  romantic 
story  from  some  version  (French,  Italian,  or  English)  of  a 
tale  of  the  Decameron  of  Boccaccio.  In  fact,  all  the  features 
of  the  wager  of  Posthumous,  the  repulse  of  lachimo,  the  false 
tokens,  the  attempted  punishment  and  wandering  of  Imogen 
are  to  be  found  in  a  tale  of  exceedingly  wide  diffusion,  a  point 


410  SHAKESPEARE  AND  FLETCHER 

to  be  remembered  when  "the  indefensible  conduct  of  Post- 
humous" is  dilated  on  by  the  psychologic  critic.  To  the 
present  author  Cymheline  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  the 
Shakespearean  plays.  He  does  not  look  for  a  closely-knit 
and  intricately-woven  plot  in  a  drama  of  this  kind,  and  can 
enjoy,  without  strictures,  a  story  that  straggles  from  Britain 
to  Rome  and  back  again  and  unites  a  romantic  tale  of  the 
Renaissance  with  a  hotchpotch  of  legendary  battles.  Tragic 
as  is  the  theme  of  a  pair  of  married  lovers  parted  for  the  nonce 
by  villainous  practices,  he  does  not  look  for  the  storm  of  pas- 
sionate agony  that  destroyed  Othello  in  every  story  involving 
jealousy;  and  he  registers  no  complaints  that  King  Cymbeline 
is  not  King  Lear.  Moreover,  he  feels  that  he  can  appreciate 
the  wholly  adequate  portraiture  of  the  lachimo  without  dis- 
cant  on  the  stronger  acid  with  which  the  picture  of  lago  is 
bitten  in,  and  delight  in  the  sweet  wifely  devotion  of  Imogen 
without  remembering  that  Cleopatra,  on  the  stage  in  the  pre- 
vious year,  is  a  more  astonishing  personage,  i  Wisdom, 
poetry,  happiness  of  phrase,  and  sufficiency  in  dramatic  por- 
traiture, so  far  as  dramatic  portraiture  comports  with  the 
quality  of  the  play,  all  are  as  characteristic  of  Cymheline  as 
of  other  and  earlier  plays  of  Shakespeare.  It  is  time  to  pro- 
test against  the  "discovery"  that  Shakespeare  was  prema- 
turely old  and  decaying  in  his  genius  at  forty-five,  careless  in 
his  art,  and  content  to  leave  his  throne  to  sit  on  the  footstools 
of  his  younger  contemporaries. 

The  Winters  Tale,  on  the  stage  by  1610  or  161 1,  is  a 
dramatized  version  of  Pandosto,  one  of  the  most  pleasing 
pastoral  stories  of  Shakespeare's  old  competitor,  Robert 
Greene.  But  when  we  say  of  any  play  of  Shakespeare's  that 
it  is  "a  dramatized  version,"  we  are  really  noting  one  of  its 
most  trivial  similarities  to  something  that  has  gone  before, 
a  thing  perhaps  little  more  important  than  a  mention  of  the 
material  out  of  which  the  David  of  Michael  Angelo  had  been 
chiseled  or  the  Perseus  of  Cellini  cast.  Shakespeare,  in 
The  Winter  s  Tale,  preserves  the  life  of  Hermione  instead  of 
permitting  her,  after  her  original,  Bellaria  in  Greene's  story, 
to  die  of  grief.     Shakespeare's  King  Leontes,  when  his  un- 


"THE  WINTER'S  TALE"  411 

reasonable  jealousy  and  his  wicked  defiance  of  the  oracle  have 
lost  him  his  wife  and  children,  spends  years,  we  are  led  to 
infer,  in  repentance  and  remains  true  to  the  memory  of  his 
unparalleled  queen.  This  makes  possible  the  reconciliation 
in  the  end  and  the  joy  and  hope  that  springs  from  the  res- 
toration of  the  lost  ones  and  Perdita's  marriage  to  her  Prince 
Florizel,  But  it  is  not  only  in  these  and  in  several  minor  ^ 
changes  that  Shakespeare  betters  Greene's  plot  for  dramatic 
use,  but  in  the  invention  and  introduction  of  new  characters. 
Antigonus,  incomparable  Paulina,  Mopsa,  Dorcas,  the  cLown, 
and  above  all  Autolycus  —  all  these  are  Shakespeare's  inven- 
tion. Where  in  all  Vagabondia  shall  we  find  so  fascinating, 
so  disreputable  a  rogue  as  Autolycus  ? 

When  daffodils  begin  to  peer. 

With  heigh!  the  doxy  over  the  dale, 
Why,  then  comes  in  the  sweet  o'  the  year; 

For  the  red  blood  reigns  in  the  winter's  pale. 

The  white  sheet  bleaching  on  the  hedge 

With  heigh!   the  sweet  birds,  O,  how  they  sing! 

Doth  set  my  pugging  tooth  on  edge; 
For  a  quart  of  ale  is  a  dish  for  a  king. 

My  traffic  is  sheets;  when  the  kite  builds,  look  to  lesser  linen. 
My  father  nam'd  me  Autolycus,  who  being,  as  I  am,  litter'd  under 
Mercury,  was  likewise  a  snapper-up  of  unconsidered  trifles.  With 
die  and  drab  I  purchas'd  this  caparison,  and  my  revenue  is  the  silly 
cheat.  Gallows  and  knock  are  too  powerful  on  the  highway;  beating 
and  hanging  are  terrors  to  me;  for  the  life  to  come,  I  sleep  out  the 
thought  of  it. 

Last  of  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  comes  The  Tempest, 
acted,  we  know,  during  the  festivities  attending  the  marriage 
of  the  Princess  Elizabeth  to  the  Palsgrave  in  1613,  along  with 
many  other  plays  and  the  grand  masques  of  Campion,  Chap- 
man, and  Beaumont,  though  certainly  not  written  (as  some 
have  over-ingeniously  surmised)  for  the  occasion.  In  the 
autumn  of  16 10,  news  of  the  shipwreck  of  an  English  vessel, 
the  Sea  Venture,  on  the  island  of  Bermuda,  reached  London. 
To  the  strangeness  of  the  tropical  landscape  and  the  fact  that 


412  SHAKESPEARE  AND  FLETCHER 

the  island  was  overrun  by  wild  hogs,  the  superstition  of  the 
sailors  had  added  that  it  was  visited  by  strange  sounds  and 
haunted  by  the  devil.  Several  pamphlets  appeared  on  the 
topic.  On  this  hint  of  the  moment,  Shakespeare  seems  to 
have  constructed  the  plot  of  The  Tempest,  adding  to  the  con- 
ception of  a  sea-isle  haunted  by  unclean  beasts  (embodied  in 
Caliban),  the  enchantment  of  Ariel,  breathing  in  musical 
zephyrs  and  doing  the  will  of  a  beneficent  magician.  The 
story  of  The  Tempest  is  slight  enough.  It  has  recently  been 
referred  with  confidence  to  "a  collection  of  mediocre  stories" 
entitled  Noches  de  Invierno  by  an  obscure  Spanish  author, 
Antonio  de  Eslava,  published  at  Pamplona  in  the  year 
1609.  But,  once  more,  do  we  read  The  Tempest  any  more 
than  we  read  A  Midsummer-Night's  Dream  only  for  the  story  ? 
And  are  we  to  expect  any  more  of  these  lovely  citizens  of  an 
enchanted  island  —  with  their  ministering  spirits  and  demons, 
even  of  their  foils  of  the  world  without,  on  whom  enchantments 
work  miracles  —  those  strong  lines  of  personality  that  belong 
to  the  personages  of  Shakespeare  whose  struggle  is  with  the 
primary  passions  of  human  nature  ?  Delicacy  and  elevation, 
as  terms  applied  to  the  imagination,  are  not  synonymous  with 
weakness  and  attenuation.  It  is  not  "the  big  pow-pow  man- 
ner," as  Sir  Walter  Scott  somewhere  calls  it,  that  alone  in- 
dicates genius  and  the  maintenance  of  poetic  power.  There 
are  defects  in  The  Tempest,  exquisite  production  of  a  controlled 
imagination  that  it  is;  but  these  are  less,  if  at  all,  the  defects 
of  failing  powers,  or  due  to  the  imitation  of  lesser  men,  than 
of  that  carelessness  as  to  things  in  which  he  is  not  immediately 
interested  which  Shakespeare  shows  everywhere,  but  in  smaller 
degree  than  almost  any  of  his  contemporaries  among  the 
dramatists.  The  Tempest  was  an  immediate  success  and  with 
The  Winter  s  Tale  continued  popular  long  after  the  author's 
death,  to  be  revived  after  the  Restoration.  There  are  those 
whose  imaginations  can  not  reach  to  the  dramatist's  art,  and 
who  therefore  disbelieve  in  that  high  impersonality  in  which 
the  author  loses  himself  in  his  creations.  To  such  The  Tem- 
pest Is  only  a  last  leaf  in  what  they  call  Shakespeare's  auto- 
biography, and  explainable  as  an  elaborated  allegory  in  which 


"THE  TEMPEST"  413 

Shakespeare  took  leave  of  the  stage  in  the  person  of  the  magi- 
cian Prospero,  abjuring  his  art  in  the  well-known  passage, 
concluding: 

I  '11  break  my  staff, 
Bury  it  certain  fathoms  in  the  earth, 
And  deeper  than  did  ever  plummet  sound 
I  '11  drown  my  book. 

To  those  who  recognize  the  larger  nature  of  drama,  who  can 
grasp  the  idea  of  an  art  higher  than  that  of  the  egotist,  in  the 
power  of  the  true  dramatic  poet  to  thrill  with  a  responsive 
sympathy  for  the  emotion  of  any  one  of  his  personages,  how- 
ever differently  situated  in  life  and  feeling  from  himself,  there 
is  no  need  to  interpret  Prospero  (nor  any  other  of  the  characters 
that  crowd  his  pages)  as  a  projection  of  Shakespeare  himself 
into  his  creative  work. 

On  the  external  side  there  is  not  much  to  chronicle  as  to 
the  last  years  of  the  great  poet's  life.  There  seems  reason  to 
believe,  from  lately  discovered  material,  that  Shakespeare 
was  later  in  London  than  161 1,  the  usual  date  set  by  the 
biographers  for  his  retirement  to  Stratford.  It  may  be  doubted 
if  he  gave  up  the  stage  altogether;  though  he  must  have  parted 
with  his  shares  in  the  Blackfriars  and  the  Globe  at  some  time 
between  1613,  when  he  is  recited  in  a  legal  document  as  a 
sharer,  and  the  date  of  his  death,  when  he  was  no  longer  such. 
Whatever  the  date  of  Shakespeare's  retirement,  he  must  have 
left  in  the  hands  of  his  company  some  plays  incomplete  and 
unfinished.  We  know  that  his  position  as  chief  dramatist 
to  the  King's  company  was  immediately  filled  by  Fletcher, 
and  abundant  evidence  exists  to  show  the  association  of  the 
two  men  for  a  time  in  their  craft.  For  example,  in  1653  a 
bookseller  named  Moseley  licensed  for  publication  a  play 
described  as  "The  History  of  Cardenio  by  Fletcher  and  Shake- 
speare." This  was  doubtless  the  play  described  as  Cardenno 
or  Cardenna,  twice  acted  by  the  company  of  Shakespeare  in 
1613.  No  trace  of  it  exists,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  Moseley  ob- 
tained the  right  to  publish  it.  The  Double  Falsehood,  a 
drama  on  what  was  doubtless  the  original  in  the  Spanish  of 


414  SHAKESPEARE   AND   FLETCHER 

Cervantes  of  Cardcnio,  was  published  as  Shakespeare's  by 
Theobald  in  1727;  but  there  are  no  traces  of  the  master's 
hand  in  it. 

Two  plays,  the  work  of  Shakespeare  and  Fletcher,  survive. 
These  are  The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen  and  Henry  Fill.  The 
former  was  first  printed  in  1634,  with  this  statement  on  the 
title:  "by  the  memorable  worthies  of  their  time,  Mr.  John 
Fletcher  and  Mr.  WiUiam  Shakespeare."  Many  critics  have 
agreed  to  accept  this  ascription  of  authorship,  though  differ- 
ences of  opinion  have  arisen  as  to  how  much  is  Shakespeare's 
and  whether  parts,  at  one  time  attributed  to  him,  may  not  be 
revisions  by  the  hand  of  Massinger.  If  Shakespeare  is  in 
The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen,  his  part  is  confined  to  the  main 
plot,  Chaucer's  Knight's  Tale  of  Palamon  and  Arcite,  already 
twice  dramatized  on  the  English  stage.  As  for  the  rest  of 
The  Two  Noble  Kinsmen,  it  is  not  notable  among  the  dramas 
of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  in  the  second  folio  of  whose  works, 
that  of  1679,  it  was  included.  The  question  of  authorship  in 
Henry  VHI  is  not  dissimilar.  It  was  during  a  performance  of 
this  play  in  June,  16 13,  that  a  blazing  wadding  from  a  cannon 
on  the  stage  of  the  Globe  Theater  ignited  the  thatch  on  the 
roof  and  burned  the  edifice  to  the  ground.  There  is  no  proof 
that  this  was  a  first  preformance,  and  it  seems  reasonable  to 
believe  (on  the  basis  of  allusions  in  the  prologue  oi Henry  VHI 
to  a  play  of  Samuel  Rowley,  entitled  When  Tou  See  Me  You 
Know  Me,  1604),  that  an  earlier  form  of  the  Shakespearean 
play  at  some  time  existed.  It  is  much  more  likely  that  Shake- 
speare should  first  have  used  such  a  subject  when  the  recent 
death  of  Queen  Elizabeth  caused  a  momentary  revival  of 
interest  in  her  history  and  in  that  of  her  parents,  than  it  is  to 
think  that  Shakespeare  revived,  without  assignable  reason, 
a  kind  of  drama,  out  of  fashion  in  16 13  for  nearly  ten  years. 
None  the  less  we  may  feel  sure  that  the  play  of  Henry  VHI 
as  we  have  it  is  of  approximately  the  latter  period,  and  the 
hand  of  Fletcher  seems  unmistakable  in  it.  The  parts  of 
King  Henry,  Katherine  of  Aragon,  and  Cardinal  Wolsey  for 
the  most  part,  are  written  in  the  best  manner  of  Shakespeare. 
Those   who   hold   the   alternative   view,  which   assumes  that 


FLETCHER'S  COMEDIES  OF  MANNERS     415 

Shakespeare,  in  the  parts  that  resemble  Fletcher,  deliberately 
imitated  the  latter,  must  explain  why  the  mimicry  was  confined 
only  to  certain  scenes  and  followed  only  the  minor  personages. 

Let  us  return  to  the  dramatic  career  of  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher  within  the  period  of  Shakespeare's  life.  Aside  from 
Beaumont's  Masque  and  his  JVoman  Hater,  1606,  a  frank 
following  of  the  Jonsonian  comedy  of  humors,  to  Beaumont's 
single  authorship  is  now  usually  assigned  the  diverting  bur- 
lesque of  the  old  heroical  drama,  The  Knight  of  the  Burning 
Pestle,  1607,  a  satire  which  the  influence  of  Jonson,  once 
more,  may  have  suggested,  and  one  by  no  means  appreciated 
by  the  bourgeois  auditors  of  the  old  plays  therein  ridiculed. 
On  the  other  hand,  Fletcher,  too,  indulged  in  experiment; 
and  his  attempt  to  popularize  the  exotic  pastoral  drama  in 
The  Faithful  Shepherdess  was,  as  we  have  seen,  not  more 
successful.  There  seems  reason  to  believe  that  another  early 
eflPort  of  Fletcher  was  the  comedy  entitled  The  Woman  s 
Prize  or  the  Tamer  Tamed,  an  entertaining  sequel  to  Shake- 
speare's Taming  of  the  Shrew,  described  above  as  the  play  in 
which  Katherina,  having  died  early,  is  succeeded  by  a  second 
wife,  Maria,  who  proceeds  to  tame  the  valiant  Petruchio  in 
a  manner  as  vigorous  as  it  is  resourceful  and  complete.  It 
was  by  way  of  such  experiments  that  these  clever  young 
dramatists  made  their  way  to  the  inventive  comedy  of  manners 
that  Fletcher  especially  later  practised  and  to  the  new  drama 
of  Philaster-type  already  described. 

Fletcherian  comedy  includes  an  interesting  group  of  dramas 
of  London  life  in  which  Middleton's  art  is  at  times  bettered. 
Such  plays  are  The  Scornful  Lady  and  Wit  at  Several  Weapons, 
repeating  several  familiar  comedy  figures;  Monsieur  Thomas, 
in  which  a  diverting  variety  of  scapegrace  who  gives  his  name 
to  the  play  is  treated  in  foil  with  another  of  Fletcher's  witty 
and  capable  women.  Even  better  is  Wit  Without  Money, 
in  which  the  right  of  a  free  spirit  to  scorn  what  all  men  love 
is  upheld  with  results  which,  thanks  to  another  clever  and 
understanding  woman,  the  world  does  not  always  mete  cut 
to  such  unthrifts.  The  Night  Walker  or  the  Little  Thief  is 
intricate  and  well  plotted;  but  it  descends  in  its  representation 


4i6  SHAKESPEARE  AND  FLETCHER 

of  the  lower  haunts  of  the  London  of  its  day  to  a  realism  that 
outdoes  Middleton  at  his  lowest  and  suggests  the  degenerate 
comedies  of  Restoration  times.  All  these  plays  fall  between 
1607  and  16 1 5  and  the  dates  of  their  writing,  as  well  as  the 
relations  of  the  authorship  of  most  of  them,  remain  in  dispute 
among  the  critics.  In  several  plays  Fletcher  carried  the 
comedy  of  contemporary  manners  over  into  foreign  countries, 
sketching,  none  the  less,  from  his  countrymen  about  him.  The 
Coxcomb,  of  indeterminate  scene,  mingles  characters  with 
Italian  and  English  names,  and  combines  a  plot  containing 
romantic  elements  with  comedy  of  manners.  Ricardo,  the 
hero,  seems  in  his  weakness  for  the  wine-cup  and  his  remorse 
for  the  consequences  of  that  weakness,  a  reminiscence  of 
Cassio.  Other  examples  of  such  plays  within  our  period  are 
The  Captain,  an  unpleasing  story,  the  scene  Venice;  and  The 
Honest  Man's  Fortune,  laid  in  Paris.  In  this  last  excellent 
comedy  is  set  forth  the  effects,  on  true  friends  and  false,  of 
a  loss  of  fortune  in  the  case  of  a  gentleman,  Montaigne,  of 
admirable  character  and  fortitude.  Both  these  plays  have 
been  dated  near  to  1613.  In  the  latter,  Fletcher  was  only  the 
ruling  spirit  of  four  collaborators. 

More  akin  to  the  tragicomedies  of  Philaster-type  for  the 
romantic  element  in  them  are  such  comedies  as  The  Beggars' 
Bush,  which  has  been  thought  to  have  been  originally  the 
work  of  Beaumont,  and  the  several  beautiful  tragicomedies 
in  which  Fletcher  laid  under  contribution  the  wealth  of  story 
which  the  literature  of  Spain,  then  in  the  height  of  its  bloom, 
was  spreading  over  Europe.  Although  The  Kntght  of  the 
Burning  Pestle  is  directly  referable  to  Don  Quixote,  it  was  not 
until  a  year  or  two  before  Shakespeare's  death  that  Fletcher, 
apparently,  showed  English  dramatists  the  way  to  the  treasures 
of  Spanish  literature.  Strange  as  it  may  seem,  there  is  no 
reason  to  believe  that  Fletcher  was  acquainted  with  the  Span- 
ish language,  for  all  his  sources  of  this  kind  are  traceable  in 
translations,  principally  French.  Even  more  strange  is  it 
that  no  one  of  the  contemporaries  of  Shakespeare  has  as  yet 
been  proved  to  have  borrowed  unmistakably  from  the  con- 
temporary  Spanish    drama.     Cervantes    and    several    of  his 


"THE   MAID'S   TRAGEDY"  417 

countrymen  furnished  material  to  the  playwrights  of  the 
later  time  of  James  and  of  Charles,  but  all  these  sources  are 
in  fiction.  The  drama  of  Lope  de  Vega  and  Cervantes  had 
practically  no  touch  with  that  of  Shakespeare  and  Fletcher. 
In  The  Chances,  1615,  perhaps  Fletcher's  earliest  play  on  a 
Spanish  original,  levy  is  made  on  the  famous  Novelas  Exem- 
plares  of  Cervantes  with  the  result  of  a  very  charming  comedy, 
somewhat  hardened  in  line  and  broadened  in  humor  as 
compared  with  its  admirable  original.  The  Chances  con- 
tinued long  a  popular  play.  Of  none  of  the  other  Spanish 
plays  in  which  Fletcher  had  a  hand  can  we  be  sure  that  they 
were  written  within  the  period  before  us. 

With  respect  to  Fletcherian  tragedy,  there  can  be  little 
question  of  the  excellence  of  The  Maid's  Tragedy  however 
its  "  Philaster-types,"  if  critics  will  so  have  it,  were  staled  on 
the  later  stage  by  incessant  repetition.  There  is  a  quality 
so  truly  heroic  in  worldly  and  wicked  Evadne,  suddenly 
awakened  from  the  security  of  her  sin  to  the  enormity  of  it, 
there  is  something,  too,  so  pitiful  in  the  faltering  Amintor, 
whose  spaniel-like  fidelity  to  the  king  who  has  wronged  and 
outraged  him  almost  as  man  was  never  wronged  and  outraged 
before,  that  we  are  carried  away  by  the  originality  of  their 
story  as  well  as  by  the  pathos  of  the  unhappy  page-maiden 
Aspasia  and  the  pervading  poetic  spirit  of  the  whole  drama. 
Fletcher  never  bettered  The  Maid's  Tragedy.  Perhaps  he 
never  again  in  tragedy  worked  in  such  perfect  adjustment 
with  his  friend  Beaumont.  But  several  other  Fletcherian 
tragedies  are  memorable.  Passing  Cupid's  Revenge,  a  lesser 
play  of  the  Philaster-group,  we  find  the  next  tragedy,  now  to 
be  placed  before  1614,  in  Bonduca  which  from  its  subject,  the 
clash  of  ancient  Britain  with  Rome,  suggests  the  background 
of  Cymbeline.  Bonduca  is  a  signal  example  of  Fletcher's 
happy  art  in  construction.  The  story  of  Boadicea  and  that 
of  Caractacus,  in  defiance  of  history,  are  happily  combined 
in  one  plot;  and  the  touch  of  a  genuine  pathos  infused  in  the 
invented  story  of  the  little  Prince  Hengo.  Fletcher's  Caratach 
is  a  fine  heroic  character,  sure  to  be  effective  in  the  hands  of 
a  robust  and  declamatory  actor;  and  the  difficult  war  scenes 


4i8  SHAKESPEARE  AND  FLETCHER 

are  handled  with  a  restraint  and  ability  to  suggest  where 
portrayal  is  impossible,  that  causes  us  to  realize  how  far  we 
have  traveled  from  the  crude  realism  of  the  old  chronicle 
plays.  In  the  following  passage  we  can  feel  Fletcher's  power 
of  pathos.  Caratach  is  in  flight  with  the  little  Prince  Hengo 
whom  he  has  preserved  among  many  perils,  and  the  Roman 
soldiers  are  close  upon  their  tracks: 

Caratach.     How  does  my  boy  ? 

Hengo.     I  would  do  well;  my  heart's  well; 
I  do  not  fear. 

Car.     My  good  boy! 

Hengo.     I  know,  uncle. 
We  must  all  die;   my  little  brother  died, 
I  saw  him  die,  and  he  died  smiling;   sure, 
There  's  no  great  pain  in  't,  uncle.     But,  pray,  tell  me, 
Whither  must  we  go  when  we  are  dead  ? 

Car.     Strange  questions!  —  [Aside. 

Why,  the  blessed'st  place,  boy!   ever  sweetness 
And  happiness  dwells  there. 

Hengo.     Will  you  come  to  me  ? 

Car.     Yes,  my  sweet  boy. 

Hengo.     Mine  aunt  too,  and  my  cousins  ? 

Car.     All,  my  good  child. 

Hengo.     No  Romans,  uncle  .? 

Car.     No,  boy. 

Hengo.     I  should  be  loth  to  meet  them  there. 

Car.     No  ill  men. 
That  live  by  violence  and  strong  oppression. 
Come  hither;   't  is  for  those  the  gods  love,  good  men. 

Hengo.     Why,  then,  I  care  not  when  I  go,  for  surely 
I  am  persuaded  they  love  me:   I  never 
Blasphemed  'em,  uncle,  nor  transgressed  my  parents; 
I  always  said  my  prayers. 

Car.     Thou  shalt  go,  then, 
Indeed  thou  shalt. 

Hengo.    When  they  please. 

Car.     That 's  my  good  boy! 
Art  thou  not  weary,  Hengo  ? 

Hengo.     Weary,  uncle! 
I  have  heard  you  say  you  have  marched  all  day  in  armor. 


"BONDUCA"  AND  "VALENTINIAN"         419 

Car.     I  have,  boy. 

Hengo.     Am  not  I  your  kinsman  ? 

Car.     Yes. 

Hengo.     And  am  not  I  as  fully  allied  unto  you 
In  those  brave  things  as  blood  ? 

Car.     Thou  art  too  tender  — 

Hengo.     To  go  upon  my  legs  ?  they  were  made  to  bear  me. 
I  can  play  twenty  mile  a-day;   I  see  no  reason. 
But,  to  preserve  my  country  and  myself, 
I  should  march  forty. 

Car.     What  wouldst  thou  be,  living 
To  wear  a  man's  strength! 

Hengo.     Why,  a  Caratach, 
A  Roman-hater,  a  scourge  sent  from  Heaven 
To  whip  these  proud  thieves  from  our  kingdom.     Hark! 

[Drum  within. 

Scarcely  less  interesting  is  the  only  other  tragedy  of  Fletcher 
that  falls  within  our  scope,  Valentinian,  also  now  to  be  placed 
before  1614.  This  contribution  of  Fletcher  to  tragedy  on 
classic  story  is  almost  as  pervasively  romantic  in  tone  as  that 
which  touches  the  field  of  chronicle  history.  Here,  out  of  an 
obscure  anecdote  of  Procopius,  the  dramatist  has  constructed 
a  tragedy  in  which,  although  his  favorite  types  —  the  lustful 
tyrant,  the  steadfast  wife,  the  bluff  heroic  soldier  —  recur,  all 
is  so  adequately  and  so  admirably  expressed  and  handled  wnth 
so  sure  a  hand  that  we  wonder  why  the  Fletcherian  art,  not- 
withstanding, does  not  fully  satisfy.^ 

Fletcher,  when  all  has  been  said,  is  the  completes!  of  Eng- 
lish dramatists,  and  this  was  alike  his  distinction  and  his  se- 
rious limitation.  The  poetry  of  Marlowe,  more  commonly  his 
passion,  bore  forward  his  drama,  until  he  attained  the  control 
of  EJiL'arJ  II,  and  even  then  the  art  of  tragedy  was  as  yet  form- 
ative.    Jonson  was  the  playwright  of  theory,  though  often  of 

'  The  only  two  other  plays  of  Fletcher,  usually  dated  prior  to 
1616,  are  Thierry  and  Theodoret  which,  however,  based  on  an  earlier 
play,  is,  as  we  have  it  and  for  its  political  allusions,  properly  placed 
after  1 617.  Love's  Cure,  sometimes  placed  at  1606,  is  founded  on  a 
play  of  De  Castro,  printed  in  Spain  for  the  first  time  about  a  month 
before  Fletcher's  death.     It  is  probably  not  his. 


420  SHAKESPEARE  AND  FLETCHER 

most  triumphant  practice.  But  he  went  ever  his  own  way, 
gratified  and  complaisant  if  the  public  went  with  him,  stubborn 
and  intractable  when  the  tide  was  against  him.  Shakespeare 
had  the  finer  gift,  to  seem  to  follow  where  he  really  led,  to  guide 
his  public  and  raise  it  to  an  appreciation  of  his  own  artistic 
standards.  This  he  did  less  by  the  persistent  presentation  of 
ideals,  impossible  of  attainment,  than  by  that  human  element  in 
his  art  that  oflPers  to  each  man  some  one  intimate  point  of 
contact  thus  to  touch  life  at  innumerable  points.  Fletcher 
was  above  all  an  adaptable  genius.  There  was  a  great  drama- 
tic literature  behind  him  to  warn  him  and  to  guide  There 
were  the  great  men,  his  fellow  dramatists,  practising  their  art 
around  him.  And  there  was  the  stage  itself,  with  its  traditions 
and  its  practical  lessons,  and  that  difficult,  exacting,  and  untam- 
able Jacobean  audience.  \  To  all  these  things  Fletcher  read- 
ily adjusted  himself  and  determined  from  the  first  that  his  aud- 
itors should  have  what  they  craved.  To  this  end  he  toned 
up  his  plays,  heightening  every  contrast,  hastening  the  rapidity 
of  the  action,  sharpening  the  surprise  of  climax  and  the  unex- 
pectedness of  the  outcome.  And  in  this  process  he  unknit  the 
sequence  of  cause  and  effect.  The  plays  of  Fletcher  and  his 
group  are  less  true  to  the  ethics  of  life  and  of  art  than  the 
greater  drama  that  preceded  them.  Dryden  thought  that 
Fletcher  could  draw  a  better  gentleman  for  the  stage  than  could 
Shakespeare;  and,  as  to  the  conventions,  doubtless,  of  social 
life  and  intercourse,  the  gentlemen  of  Fletcher's  drawing  were 
nearer  in  their  conduct  and  conversation  to  the  gentlemen 
of  Dryden's  time  than  were  the  latter  to  the  larger  and  more 
universally  veritable  figures  of  Shakespeare.  Elizabethan 
drama  rose  rapidly  from  the  flats  ofGorboJuc  and  Gammer  Gur- 
f on,  reaching  beetling  cliffs  in  Marlowe,  and  heights  that  pierced 
the  sky,  with  much  that  was  more  pleasant  and  habitable  at 
lower  levels  in  the  royal  domain  of  Shakespeare  and  his  immedi- 
ate fellows.  Fletcher  leads  us  downward  in  a  long,  but  not  too 
precipitous  decline,  diversified  from  time  to  time  with  highland 
kindred  to  the  mountainous  region  that  we  have  left  behind  us; 
reproducing  much  of  its  fauna  and,  in  particular,  its  lovely  poet- 
ical flora.  There  are  other  highlands  on  the  broad  map  of  Eng- 


PROSE  AT  SHAKESPEARE'S   DEATH        421 

lish  drama;  but  they  concern  us  not.  The  range  of  Elizabethan 
drama,  too,  is  to  be  measured  by  its  depths  as  well  as  by  its 
heights,  by  its  deserts  as  well  as  by  its  cultivatable  lands. 
To  vary  the  figure,  there  has  been  no  drama  of  such  an  ampli- 
tude of  vibration,  so  tuned  to  respond,  a  universal  resonator, 
to  the  infinite  varieties  and  degrees  of  the  emotions  and  pas- 
ions  of  men. 

When  Shakespeare  died,  in  z^pril,  1616,  King  James  was  at 
the  height  of  his  reign;  and  the  Stuart  tenets  of  absolute  king- 
ship in  church  and  state  had  already  hardened  the  Puritan  tem- 
per and  provoked  the  parliamentary  struggle  that,  leading 
inevitably  to  rebellion,  was  to  cost  his  son  and  successor  his 
throne  and  his  life.  These  things  concerned  the  future,  and 
as  yet  little  affected  English  daily  life.  The  king's  weak  and 
disgraceful  rule,  on  the  other  hand,  was  more  patent  to  the 
world;  his  infatuation  for  his  favorites,  his  condoning  of  folly 
and  worse,  the  extravagance  that  prompted  extortion  and  ille- 
gal taxation,  the  corruption  of  the  courts,  and  the  suppression 
of  Parliament:  these  were  some  of  the  portents  of  the  day. 
And  yet  to  the  superficial  observer,  the  times  were  prosper- 
ous and  the  arts  were  as  flourishing  as  in  the  days  of  Elizabeth. 

Richard  Hakluyt  died  in  the  same  year  with  Shakespeare; 
with  him  closed  the  long  and  interesting  chapter  of  England's 
early  maritime  adventure.  An  occasional  pamphlet  or  drama 
of  old  fashion,  or  a  belated  adventurer,  like  Captain  John 
Smith,  might  respond  to  the  memory  of  the  perils  and  escapes, 
the  bravery  and  heroic  daring  that  made  the  old  sea-dogs 
the  terror  of  the  Spanish  ocean.  But  with  the  execution  of 
Raleigh,  two  years  later,  the  last  of  the  old  Devonian  heroes 
was  gone,  and  the  sons  of  the  men  who  had  hunted  the  Armada 
to  the  Hebrides  and  back  into  the  Irish  sea,  now  contemplated 
with  indifference  the  alliance  of  an  English  prince  with  an  In- 
fanta of  Spain.  But  if  one  form  of  English  prose  had  lost  its 
old  insular  national  spirit,  English  style  in  general  continued  to 
develop  into  a  simpler  and  less  labored  instrument  for  the  ex- 
pression of  the  complexities  of  modern  thought,  leaving  Euphu- 
ism and  Arcadianism  behind  it,  and  much  of  its  Latinism  as 


422  NEW  BOOKS  AND  OLD 

well,  though  still  destined  to  undergo  a  relapse  into  the  florid, 
the  cumbrous  and  involved,  before  it  reached  the  reasonable 
directness  of  Dryden.  As  to  the  varieties  of  prose,  none  fol- 
lowed in  the  reign  of  the  second  Stuart  which  had  not  been 
abundantly  presaged  before  King  James  had  been  long  on  his 
throne.  The  pamphlet  and  occasional  broadside  continued, 
assuming  more  and  more  the  character  of  the  newspaper  that 
was  yet  to  be,  and  taking  on  with  the  trend  of  the  time  an  in- 
creasingly bitter  political  and  satirical  nature.  Wither  is  an 
example  of  a  sweet  poet  and  amiable  man  turned  to  the 
austerity  of  Puritanism  and  the  rancor  of  the  libeler  by 
this  spirit  of  his  day.  The  essay,  for  the  same  reason,  was 
succeeded  in  popular  esteem  by  the  "character,"  wherein 
much  was  sacrificed  to  the" palpable  hit";  and  even  history, 
as  later  with  Clarendon,  was  conceived  as  meriting  praise 
when  it  sparkled  with  the  wit  of  satirical  portraiture  cleverly 
essayed. 

Among  new  books  in  prose,  in  the  closing  years  of  Shake- 
speare's life,  were  Daniel's  History  of  Engl  mid  and  Hall's  Con- 
templations, Alexander's  completion  of  the  Arcadia,  Raleigh's 
History  of  the  World,  Selden's  Titles  of  Honor,  and  his  History 
of  Tithes.  Camden's  Annals  of  Queen  Elizabeth  appeared  in 
1615.  In  this  same  year  Breton's  Characters  showed  the 
immediate  influence  of  the  second  edition  of  Bacon's  Essays, 
published  three  years  earlier.  As  to  Breton's  pamphlets  at 
large,  of  the  thirty  or  more  titles  attributed  to  him,  at  least 
twenty  had  appeared  by  16 16.  Dekker,  too,  to  mention  only 
one  other  pamph^teer,  had  put  out  some  thirteen  booklets  of 
this  class  —  few  of  them  reprinted  —  up  to  this  date.  But 
later  editions  of  old  books,  better  than  new,  disclose  contem- 
porary taste.  In  161  o,  Foxe's  Book  of  Martyrs  reached  a  sixth 
edition,  not  to  be  reprinted  until  1632.  The  year  1612  saw  the 
fourth  edition  of  North's  Plutarch;  the  following  year  the 
Arcadia  in  a  sixth,  and  Euphues  in  a  ninth  issue.  Lower  down 
in  the  scale  of  fiction,  Munday's  Palmerin  of  England  attained 
a  third  edition  in  1616,  his  Amadis  de  Gaule,  a  second  three 
years  later. 

As  to  non-dramatic  poetry,  Spenser,  Sidney,  Drayton,  ajnd 


POETRY  AT  SHAKESPEARE'S  DEATH   423 

Daniel  were  the  four  most  popular  Elizabethan  poets.  The 
first  collected  edition  of  Spenser  appeared  in  161 1,  following 
thirteen  issues  of  separate  poems  or  partial  collections,  within 
the  poet's  life.  Astrophel  and  Stella,  after  three  editions  in  the 
single  year  1 591,  was  always  reprinted  with  the  Arcadia,  thus 
issuing  for  the  seventh  time  in  16 13.  Daniel  edited  his  non- 
dramatic  poetry  four  times  in  his  lifetime  (he  died  in  16 19) 
and  there  were  fifteen  separate  editions  of  his  poems,  and 
dramas  besides;  while  Drayton  edited  the  third  and  best 
edition  of  his  works  in  16 19,  three  more  appearing  later,  and 
issued,  besides,  seventeen  separate  editions  of  individual  works. 
One  of  the  most  popular  poems  of  the  time  was  Warner's  Al- 
bion s  England,  which  reached  an  eighth  edition  by  i6i2;  a 
fourth  edition  of  Sir  John  Davies'  Nosce  Teipsum  appeared  in 
16 1 8,  a  fifth  before  the  date  of  the  Shakespeare  folio. 
Fletcher's  Christ's  Victory  and  Triumph,  Browne's  Britannia' s 
Pastorals,  and  Wither's  The  Shepherd's  Pipe  disclose  the  con- 
tinued popularity  of  the  Spenserian  mode  between  16 10  and 
16 1 6.  Lower  in  the  scale  of  literature,  Davies  of  Hereford 
had  issued  a  dozen  pamphlets  in  verse,  Breton  more  than  a 
score  up  to  the  same  date;  whilst  in  translation  the  year  1616 
was  signalized  by  the  final  collection  of  The  Whole  Works  of 
Homer  by  Chapman,  a  sixth  edition  of  the  earliest  parts,  and 
this,  besides  the  laborious  poet's  other  activities  in  the  drama 
and  in  nearly  a  dozen  other  volumes  of  original  verse.  Well 
may  we  pause  to  consider  such  an  activity  (only  partially  in- 
dicated here)  in  a  metropolitan  community  that  had  not  yet 
reached  two  hundred  thousand  souls,  the  center  of  a  nation 
scarcely  numbering  three  millions;  a  community,  moreover,  in 
which  the  proportion  of  readers  by  reason  of  illiteracy  must 
have  been  perhaps  three  in  ten,  and  one  in  which  the  high 
proportionate  cost  of  books  must  still  further  have  limited  the 
possible  number  of  purchasers. 

But  the  most  important  single  volume,  published  in  the  year 
of  Shakespeare's  death,  was  the  first  folio  of  the  collected 
works  of  Ben  Jonson.  Jonson  is  the  earliest  English  dra- 
matic poet  so  to  appear,  and  the  only  one  to  superintend  such 
an  edition  of  his  works  himself.     His  popularity  demanded  a 


+24  WORKS  OF  THE  DRAMATISTS 

second  edition  in  1632,  which  was  completed  in  1641,  some 
four  years  after  the  poet's  death.  Jonson  is  also  the  only  Eliz- 
abethan dramatist  who  saw  a  collected  edition  of  his  own  works 
in  print;  for  although  a  larger  number  of  Shakespeare's  plays, 
singly  and  in  quarto,  "escaped  into  print"  during  his  lifetime 
than  of  any  other  playwright,  the  great  dramatist  had  been  dead 
seven  years  before  the  famous  first  folio  of  1623  was  printed. 
Jonson's  works  were  published,  for  a  third  time,  in  1692;  the 
two  folio  editions  of  the  plays  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  date 
1647  and  1679.  But  Shakespeare  demanded  publication  four 
times  —  in  1623,  1632,  1663-1664,  and  1685  —  within  the 
period  up  to  1700.  Only  two  other  of  Shakespeare's  actual 
dramatic  contemporaries  were  collected  even  imperfectly  before 
the  time  of  the  Restoration:  these  were  Lyly,  whose  Six  Court 
Comedies  dates  1632,  and  Marston,  whose  Works,  containing 
an  equal  number  of  his  plays,  appeared  in  the  next  year. 

In  the  drama,  the  exit  of  Shakespeare  and  the  next  few 
years  marked  a  momentous  change.  Henslowe  died  in  the 
same  year  with  Shakespeare  and  with  him  passed  away  the  old 
methods  of  theatrical  management;  for  his  son-in-law,  Alleyn 
the  actor,  now  long  since  retired  and  married  to  his  second  wife, 
a  daughter  of  Dr.  Donne,  the  poet  and  Dean  of  St.  Paul's, 
had  put  away  his  humble  and  sordid  past,  and  had  founded 
Dulwich  College  to  preserve  therein  Henslowe's  Diary  and 
other  treasures  for  the  antiquarian  of  our  Elizabethan  drama. 
In  1619  Richard  Burbage  died.  Burbage  had  made  the  title 
roles  of  Shakespeare  as  Alleyn  had  made  those  of  Marlowe. 
With  these  two  gone,  and  some  of  the  elder  comedians  as  well, 
the  older  ways  of  acting,  too,  must  have  suffered  a  change 
which,  in  view  of  the  greater  prevalence  of  melodrama,  senti- 
mentality, masquing,  and  scenic  display,  could  scarcely  have 
been  altogether  a  change  for  the  better.  But  although  the 
drama,  strictly  Elizabethan,  was  now  succeeded  in  the  popu- 
lar esteem  by  tragicomedies  and  comedies  of  contemporary 
life,  and  its  range  and  artistic  appeal  was  becoming  more  and 
more  restricted,  with  Puritanism  withdrawn  from  the  theaters 
and  the  more  serious-minded  intent  on  the  political  struggle 
impending,  we  must  remember  that  Shakespeare's  plays  and 


THE  SUPREMACY  OF  SHAKESPEARE       425 

the  earlier  successes  of  Marlowe,  Jonson,  and  others  still  held 
the  stage  with  Fletcher  and  Shirley  and  what  came  after. 

The  age  of  Shakespeare  knew,  as  every  age  in  English- 
speaking  lands  since  has  known,  that  in  Shakespeare  the  world 
has  alike  its  truest  dramatist  and  its  greatest  poet.  To  escape 
his  rule  and  sway  it  is  not  in  the  nature  of  ignorance  nor 
criticism  to  effect,  however  the  alien  moralist  may  display  the 
limitations  of  his  own  comprehension  or  native  Philistinism 
may  deliver  its  diatribes  against  Shakespeare's  poetry,  his  eth- 
ics, or  his  art.  It  is  not  in  the  nature  of  things  human 
to  withstand  forever  the  inroads  of  time.  The  beautiful 
imagery  of  the  poets  that  tells  of  gold-laden  galleons,  ly- 
ing in  the  depths  of  the  ocean,  their  treasures  jeweling  the 
floor  of  the  sea,  is  denied  by  the  stubborn  facts  of  science. 
Sea-water  is  the  universal  solvent  wherein  even  gold  is 
tarnished  and  all  at  last  reduced  to  the  universal  slime.  So, 
too,  the  wealth  of  this  great  literature  of  Shakespeare  and  his 
fellows  must  yield  perceptibly  to  the  universal  solvent,  time; 
what  was  bright  becomes  tarnished,  what  was  vitally  signifi- 
cant, recoverable  by  the  plodding  student  alone,  to  him  an  ob- 
ject of  curious  lore  far  more  than  the  inevitable  reality  or  the 
adored  ideal  that  it  was  to  the  man  of  Elizabeth's  day.  Yet 
who  will  say  that  this  is  all  ?  Homer  still  lives,  and  he  is 
bold  who  will  set  limits  to  his  immortality.  And  there  remains, 
too,  in  this  incomparable  literature  of  the  greatest  age  of 
modern  times,  more  than  enough  that  will  continue  sound, 
significant,  and  potent  for  generations  and  generations  to 
come,  long  after  our  petty  triumphs  of  to-day  shall  have 
perished  irrevocably  from  the  memories  of  men. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

This  bibliography  makes  no  pretensions  to  completeness. 
Its  chief  concern  is  the  representation,  in  a  condensed  form,  of 
the  Hterary  activity  of  the  writers  discussed  in  this  book;  its 
second,  an  indication  as  to  where  these  authors  may  be  read 
in  modern  available  editions.  Works  of  critical  comment 
have  been  to  a  large  degree  ignored,  not  from  a  want  of 
appreciation  of  the  admirable  results  of  modern  scholarship, 
but  from  a  conviction  that,  in  the  study  of  literature,  a  knowl- 
edge at  first  hand  of  what  the  author  has  written  is  the  one 
supreme  and  important  thing. 

The  following  items  are  arranged  first  by  the  name  of  the 
author;  secondly  by  title,  where  the  book  is  anonymous  or 
the  work  of  several  authors.  A  few  subject-titles  are  added 
where  the  matter  is  not  otherwise  covered.  A  few  abbrevia- 
tions, mostly  obvious,  are  employed.  An  exponent  (thus 
1632^)  means  that  more  than  one  edition  was  issued  in  the 
same  year.  Well  known  collections,  such  as  Dodsley's  Old 
English  Plays,  and  Chalmers'  English  Poets  are  alluded  to 
by  the  author's  name  only.  Garner  signifies  Arhers  English 
Garner,  new  edition  by  Sidney  Lee;  D.  N .  B.,  the  Dictionary 
of  National  Biography. 

Addlington,  William,  fl.  1565.  The  Golden  Ass  of  Apuleius. 
1566,  four  add.  to  1596.  Tudor  Translations,  ed.  C.  Whibley,  1892. 
/  Alabaster,  William,  1567-1640.  Roxana  Tragedia,  1632, 
Controversial  works  and  a  few  scattered  p>oems. 

Alexander,  Sir  William  (Earl  of  Stirling),  1567-1640.  Aurora, 
1604;  Monarchic  Tragedies,  1603-1607.     Ed.  Rogers,  1877,  2  vols. 

Allott,  Robert,  fl.  1600.  Editor  of  Wit's  Theater;  extracts  from 
ancient  authors,  1599;  England's  Parnassus,  1600,  repr.  Park, 
Hehconta,  1815. 

Andrews.  Lancelot  (Bishop  of  Winchester),  1555-1626.  Russel, 
Life  and  Works,  1863;  Church,  in  Masters  of  English  Theology,  1877. 

427 


428  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Anton,  Robert,  fl.  1616.  Moriomachia,  1613;  Philosophers' 
Satires,  1616;  Vice's  Anatomy,  1617. 

Arden  of  Feversham,  1592,  I599»  '^^3i-  Ed.  Bullen,  1887;  ed. 
Bayne,  Temple  Dramatists,  1897. 

Armin,  Robert,  fl.  1610.  Fool  upon  Fool,  1605,  repr.  as  A  Nest 
of  Ninntes,  1608,  in  Sh.  Soc.  Publ.,  1842.  The  Two  Maids  of 
Moreclacke,  1609. 

AwDELEY,  John,  fl.  1559-1577.  Fraternity  of  Vagabonds,  1565, 
three  edd.     Repr.  The  Shakespeare  Library,  1907. 

Bacon,  Francis,  1561-1626.  Controversies  in  the  Church,  1587; 
Essays,  1597,  1612,  1625;  The  Advancement  of  Learning,  1605,  ed. 
Chase,  1906;  De  Sapientia  Veterum,  1609;  Certain  Considerations 
touching  the  Plantation  in  Ireland,  1609;  Novum  Organum,  1620— 
1658  in  various  separate  publications,  ed.  Fowler,  1878;  History  of 
Henry  VH,  1622;  De  Dignitate  et  Augmentts  Scientiarum,  1623; 
Apophthegms,  1624;  Psalms,  1625;  Sylva  Sylvarum,  1627;  The  New 
Atlantis,  1629;  Maxims  of  the  Law,  1 630;  and  various  other  post- 
humous publications,  1638-1671.  Collected  ed.  Spedding,  Ellis  and 
Heath,  1857-59,  7  vols.  See  also  Spedding,  Life  and  Times  of  Bacon, 
1878,  2  vols.;  and  Church,  in  Men  of  Letters  Series,  1889;  Essays 
often  reprinted.  Poems,  ed.  Grosart,  Fuller  Worthies'  Miscellanies, 
I,  1870.  See  Bibliography,  Cambridge  History  of  Literatute,  1910, 
vol.  iv. 

Baldwin,  William,  fl.  1559.     See  Mirror  for  Magistrates. 

Barnes,  Barnabe,  1569  .''-1609,  Parthenophil  and  Parthenope, 
1593;  repr.  Garner,  Sonnets,  i;  A  Divine  Century  of  Spiritual  Sonnets, 
1595,  repr.  Park,  Hcliconia,  ii.  1815.  The  Devil's  Charter,  1607,  ed. 
McKerrow,  Materialien  zur  Kunde,  vi,  1904. 

Barnfield,  Richard,  1574-1627.  The  Affectionate  Shepherd, 
1594;  Cynthia,  1595;  Lady  Pecunia,  1598,  1605;  the  last  two  reprinted 
by  Collier,  Reprints,  1866,  i.  Poems,  ed.  Arber,  English  Scholar's 
Library,  1882,  and  Garner,  Longer  Elizabethan  Poems,  1 903. 

Barrey,  Lodowick,  Ram-Alley,  161 1,  1636,  1639,  Dodsley  x. 

Basse,  William,  i  583-1 653.  Sword  and  Buckler,  1602;  various 
elegies  and  commendatory  poems,  between  1602  and  1653;  Pastorals, 
first  printed  by  Collier,  Miscellaneous  Tracts,  1870;  Polyhymnia,  first 
printed  in  Poetical  Works  of  W.  B.,  ed.  Bond,  1893. 

Bastard,  Thomas,  i  566-1 61 8.  Chrestoleros,  1598.  Poems,  ed. 
Grosart,  Occasional  Issues,  1880. 

Beaumont,  Francis,  1584-16 16.  Salmacis  and  Hermaphroditus, 
1602;   Poems,    1640,   enlarged    1653,   and   reprinted   as   The   Golden 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  429 

Remains  of  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  1 660.  All  these  are  doubtfully 
Beaumont's.  Masque  of  the  Inner  Temple  and  Gray's  Inn,  1613. 
For  the  dramas  see  Fletcher,  John.  Poems,  repr.  in  modern  edd.  of 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher. 

Bedingfield,  Thomas,  d.  1613.  Cardanus*  Comfort,  1573; 
The  Florentine  History  of  Macchtavelli,  1595;  repr.  Tudor  Transla- 
tions, 1905;  and  other  works. 

Bellum  Grammaticale,  1635.  Not  reprinted.  See  Sh.  Jahrbuch, 
xxxiv. 

Bible,  Erasmus,  New  Testament,  Lat.  (with  Gk.  text),  1 516, 
various  edd.  and  Latin  paraphrases,  to  1524.  Tyndale,  New  Testa- 
ment in  English,  1525^,  facsimile  repr.  Fry,  1862,  ed.  Arber,  1871; 
Pentateuch,  1530,  some  forty  edd.  of  these  two  (usually  together)  to 
1553.  Coverdale  Bible  (complete),  1535^  (one  of  these,  the  first  Bible 
printed  in  England);  1537,  New  Testament,  1 538,  revised;  whole 
Btble,  1539;  Matthews,  1537,  1 539;  Taverner,  1539;  Great  Bible, 
1539,  l540^  1541^  Whittingham,  1557  (part),  Geneva  Bible,  1560, 
eighty-six  edd.  to  161 1 ;  Bishops'  Bible  (Parker),  1568,  revised  1572, 
twenty  edd.  to  1606;  Rheims  New  Testament,  1582,  Douay  Old 
Testament,  1 609,  few  edd.;  Authorized  Version  or  King  James'  Bible, 
161 1.     Upwards  of  a  score  of  edd.  to  1616. 

F.  H.  A.  Scrivener,  The  Authorized  Edition  of  the  Bible,  1884; 
A.  S.  Cook,  The  Bible  and  English  Prose  Style,  1892;  F.  A.  Gasquet, 
The  Old  English  Btble,  1897;  R.  G.  Moulton,  The  Literary  Study  of 
the  Bible,  1899;  A.  Wright,  J  General  History  of  the  Bible,  1905; 
J.  H.  Gardiner,  The  Bible  as  Literature,  1906;  J.  I.  Mombert,  English 
Versions  of  the  Bible,  1907. 

Blenerhasset,  Thomas,  1550  ?-i625  ?.  The  Second  Part  of  the 
Mirror  for  Magtstrates,  1 578.     See  Mirror  for  Magistrates. 

Bodenham,  John,  fl.  1597.  Reputed  editor  of  fFit's  Common- 
wealth, 1597;  Belvedere  or  the  Garden  of  the  Muses,  1600,  repr.  Spenser 
Society,  1875;  England's  Helicon,  1600,  ed.  Bullen,  1887. 

?Bower,  Richard.    Appius  and  Virginia,  1575,  repr.  Dodsley,  iv. 

Braithwaite,  Richard,  1588  ?-i673.  The  Golden  Fleece,  1611; 
The  Poet's  JVillow,  The  Prodigal's  Tears,  and  The  Scholar's  Medley, 
all  in  1614;  A  Strappado  for  the  Devil,  1615;  and  twenty-four  later 
tracts  in  verse  or  prose. 

Breton,  Nicholas,  1545  ?-i626  ?.  The  Works  of  a  Young  Wit,  A 
Flourish  upon  Fancy,  both  1577,  the  latter  in  part  reprinted  in  Park, 
Heltconia,  1815;  Pasquil's  Madcap,  Fool's  Cap,  Pasqud's  Pass,  all 
1600,  the  first  also  1605;   The  Soul's  Harmony,  1602;  The  Passionate 


430  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Shepherd,  1 604,  and  fifteen  other  volumes  of  verse  to  Jn  Invective 
Against    Treason,    1616.      fVit's    Trenchamour,    1597;    A    Packet    of 
Madcap  Letters,  1603,  many  edd.  to  1685;  An  Old  Mans  Lesson,  1605; 
Characters  upon  Essays,  1615;    The  Good  and  the  Bad,  1616,  1648 
and  seventeen  other  prose  pamphlets  to  Fantastics,  1626. 

Some  seventeen  other  works  have  been  attributed  to  Breton;  see 
bibliography  in  Morley,  English  Writers,  xi.  Collected  ed.  Grosart, 
1879  (not  quite  complete),  2  vols.  See  Tappan,  The  Poetry  of  B. 
Publ.  Mod.  Lang.  Asso.,  1898;  Kuskop,  B.  und  seine  Prosaschriften, 
1902. 

Bright,  Timothy,  1551  ?-i6i5.  Abridgement  of  Foxe's  Book  of 
Martyrs,  1581,  1589;  various  medical  pamphlets;  Characterie,  "an  art 
of  short,  swift  and  secret  writing,"   1588;  repr.  J.  H.  Ford,  1888. 

Brinsley,  John,  fl.  1612.  Ludus  Literarius,  or  the  Grammar 
School,  1612,  1627,  and  several  other  educational  works  and  transla- 
tions. 

Brooke,  Arthur,  d.  1563.  Romeus  and  Juliet,  1562.  Ed. 
Munro,  The  Shakespeare  Library,  1908. 

Brooke,  Christopher,  d.  1628.  The  Ghost  of  Richard  III, 
1614;  contributor  to  Britannia's  Pastorals,  1613,  and  The  Shepherd's 
Pipe,  1 61 4.  See  Browne,  William,  and  Wither.  Ed.  Grosart,  Fuller 
Worthies'  Miscellanies,  1872,  iii. 

Brooke,  Lord,  see  Greville,  Fulke. 

Browne,William  (of  Tavistock),  1 591-1643  ?.  Britannia's  Pas- 
torals, 1613-16, 1625;  The  Shepherd's  Pipe,  1614;  Masque  of  the  Inner 
Temple  (Ulysses  and  Circe),  in  Works,  ed,  Davies,  1772,  3  vols.; 
Poems,  ed.  G.  Goodwin,  The  Muses'  Library,  1894.  See  also  F. 
W.  Moorman,  William  Browne,  1897. 

Brydges,  John  (Dean  of  Salisbury).  Alleged  author  of  Gammer 
Gurton.     See  Ross,  in  Anglia,  xix;  but  see  Stevenson,  William. 

Bryskett,  Lodowick,  fl.  1571-1611.  Discourse  of  Civil  Life, 
i6o62. 

Buc,  Sir  George,  d.  1623.  Daphnis  Polystephanos,  1605,  2nd 
ed.  (under  title  The  Great  Plantagenet),  1635;  The  Third  University  of 
England,  1615;  History  of  Richard  III,  1646. 

Byrd,  William,  1538  ?-i623.  Musician  and  publisher  of  music; 
probably  not  a  poet.  Psalms,  Sonnets,  1 588;  Songs  of  Sundry 
Natures,  1589,  1610;  Second  Book  of  Songs,  1611.  All  in  Garner, 
Shorter  Poems,  I903. 

Camden,  William,  1551-1623.  Britannia,  1586,  six  edd.  to  1607, 
transl.  1610,  1637;  repr.  R.  Gough,  1806,  4  vols.;  Remains  Concerning 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  431 

Britain,  1605,  seven  edd.  to  1674;  Annals,  1615  and  nine  edd.  to  1688, 
repr.  ed.  Hearne,  171 7,  3  vols.     Other  minor  works. 

Campion,  Edmund,  1540-1581.  See  Simpson,  Edmund  Campion^ 
a  Biography,  1867. 

Campion,  Thomas,  d.  1619.  Poemata,  1595,  1619;  A  Book  of 
Airs,  1601;  Observations  in  the  Art  of  Poesy,  1602;  The  Lord's 
Masque,  pr.  Nichols,  Progresses  of  King  James,  1828,  ii;  Two 
Books  of  Airs,  1613;  Songs  of  Mourning,  1613;  Counterpoint,  1613; 
Third  and  Fourth  Book  of  Airs,  1617;  Works  (complete),  ed.  Bullen, 
1889.  Selections,  E.  Rhys,  The  Lyric  Poets,  1895.  The  Song  Books 
also  in  Garner,  Shorter  Poems,  1903.  Ed.  S.  P.  Vivain,  English 
Poems,  19  ID. 

Carew,  Richard,  1555-1620-  Godfrey  oi  Bulloigne,  transl.  1594. 
Repr.  Grosart,  Occasional  Issues,  1 88 1.  See  Retrospective  Review, 
1821,  and  Koeppel  in  Anglia,  xi. 

Carey,  Robert  (Earl  of  Monmouth),  1560-1639.  Memoirs,  first 
printed  by  Walpole,  1759.  "Account  of  the  death  of  Elizabeth," 
Garner,  Stuart  Tracts,  1 903. 

Cecil,  William  (Lord  Burleigh),  1 520-1 598.  Certain  Precepts 
for  the  Well-ordering  of  a  Man's  Life,  1 61 7,  six  edd.  to  1783.  In 
later  ones  called  Lord  Burleigh's  Advice  to  his  Son. 

Chapman,  George,  1559  ?-i634.  The  Shadows  of  Night,  1594. 
The  Tears  of  Peace,  1 609;  Andromeda  Liber ata,  161 4;  and  seven  other 
publications  of  original  verse  to  A  Justification  of  Nero,  1629. 

Ovid's  Banquet  of  Sense,  1 595;  Hero  and  Leander,  completed, 
1598;  Homer,  Iliad,  1598-1611;  Odyssey,  1614;  Whole  Works  of 
Homer,  1616;  Hymns,  etc.,  1624;  Hesiod,  1618;  ]\i.w&az\.  Satire  V, 
1629. 

The  Blind  Beggar  of  Alexandria,  1598;  A  Humorous  Day's  Mirth, 
1599;  All  Fools,  1605;  Eastward  Hoe  (with  Jonson  and  Marston), 
1605^;  Monsieur  D' Olive,  1606;  The  Gentleman  Usher,  1606;  Bussy 
D'Ambois,  1607,  fi^^  ^^^-  *°  ^^57'  ^^^  Conspiracy  of  Byron,  1608, 
1625;  ^^^y  ^"y^  161 1;  The  Widow's  Tears,  1612;  The  Revenge  of 
Bussy  D'Ambois,  1613;  Pompey  and  Caesar,  1631^,  1653;  The  Ball, 
1639;  Chabot,  1639  (these,  two  with  Shirley);  Alphonsus  of  Germany, 
and  Revenge  for  Honor,  both  1654,  are  not  by  Chapman.  Dramatic 
Works,  ed.  Pearson,  1873,  3  vols.;  Complete  Works,  ed.  Shepherd 
(inferior),  1874-75,  3  vols.  Selected  dramas,  ed.  Mermaid  (Phelps), 
1895;  Belles  Lettres  Series  (Boas,  1905,  Parrott,  1907),  four  plays,  2 
vols.  Homer,  ed.  Hooper,  1857,  5  vols.  Bibliography,  Morley,  Erf 
glish  Writers,  xi. 


432  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Characters.  See  Hall,  Joseph;  Overbury;  Breton.  H.  Morley, 
Character  Writing  of  the  Seventeenth  Century,  1891;  Greenough, 
Studies  in  the  Development  of  Character  JVriting,  1898;  Whibley,  in 
Blackwood's,  1909. 

Chester,  Robert,  I566?-i640?.  Love's  Martyr,  1601;  repr. 
New  Sh.  Soc,  1878. 

Chettle,  Henry,  1564-5  .''-1607  ?.  Kind-Heart's  Dream,  1593, 
repr.  Sh.AUusion  Books,New  Sh.  Soc. ,lSj^;  Pierce  Plain's  Apprentice- 
ship, 1593;  Downfall  and  Death  of  Robert,  Earl  of  Huntington  (2  parts 
with  Munday),  1601,  repr.  Hazlitt's  Dodsley,  viii,  1874;  Patient 
Grissil  (with  Dekker  and  Haughton),  1603,  repr.  Sh.  Soc,  1841; 
Hoffman,  1631,  repr.  Ackermann,  1894,  with  bibhography.  Eng- 
land's Mourning  Garment,  1 604,  also  in  Sh.  Allusion  Books,  as  above. 

Chronicle  Plays.  See  Schelling,  The  English  Chronicle  Play, 
1902;  and  Bibliographical  Essay,  Elizabethan  Drama,  1908,  by  the 
same. 

Churchyard,  Thomas,  1520  ?-i6o4.  Between  Shore's  Wife  con- 
tributed to  The  Mirror  for  Magistrates,  ed.  1 563,  and  Churchyard's 
Good  Will,  1603,  some  forty  tracts  in  verse  mostly,  moral,  devotional, 
historical,  personal,  elegiac,  etc.  The  best  is  The  Worthies  of  Wales, 
1587,  ed.  Spenser  Soc.  1 87 1.  Select  works  are  reprinted  in  Nichol's 
Progresses  of  Queen  Elizabeth,  The  Harleian  Miscellany,  and  Collier's 
English  Poetical  Miscellanies. 

College  Drama.  See  Elizabethan  Drama,  chapter  xiv,  and  biblio- 
graphy.    Also  Churchill  and  Keller,  Sh.  Jahrbuch,  xxxiv,  1898. 

Constable,  Henry,  1562-1613.  Diana,  1592,  1594,  Gamer, 
Sonnets,  ii;  Spiritual  Sonnets,  first  pr.  Park,  Heliconia,  ii.  Ed.  Hazlitt, 
complete,  1859. 

Contention  between  the  Houses  of  York  and  Lancaster,  I  and  2,  see 
Pseudo-Shakespeare. 

Cooke,  Joshua,  fl.  1602.  How  a  Man  may  Choose  a  Good 
Wife,  1602,  repr.  Dodsley,  ix. 

Cooper,  Thomas  (Bishop  of  Winchester),  151 7  .''-1594.  See 
Marprelate  Controversy. 

CoRYATE,  Thomas,  1577-1617.  Crudities,  161 1;  repr.  Glasgow, 
1905,  2  vols;  Coryate's  Crambe,  1611;  The  Oldcombian  Banquet,  l6ri; 
Traveller  of  the  English  Wits,  1616;  Letter  from  Agra,  1616. 

CoVERDALE,  MiLES,  1488-1568.     See  Bible. 

Cranmer,  Thomas  (Archbishop  of  Canterbury),  1489-1556. 
Remains,  Parker  Soc,  1844-6,  2  vols.;  and  see  Bible. 

Criticism,  Elizabethan  Poetic,  and  Verse.    See  Haslewood,  Ancient 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  433 

Critical  Essays,  l8ll,  2  vols.;  Schelling,  Elizabethan  Verse  Criticism, 
1893;  Saintsbury,  History  of  English  Criticism,  1900-1904,  3  vols. 
G.  G.  Smith,  Elizabethan  Critical  Essays,  1904. 

Cromwell,  Chronicle  History  of  Thomas  Lord,  l6o2,  1613,  Hazlitt, 
Doubtful  Plays  of  Shakespeare,  1887.     See  Pseudo-Shakespeare. 

Daborne,  Robert,  fl.  1613.  The  Christian  Turned  Turk,  1612; 
The  Poor  Man's  Comfort,  1655,  both  reprinted  in  Anglia,  xx,  xxi, 
1897-98. 

Danett,  Thomas,  fl.  1600.  Description  of  the  Low  Countries, 
1593;  History  of  Comines,  1596. 

Daniel,  Samuel,  1562-1619.  Delia,  i^gi;  Delia  with  The  Com- 
plaint of  Rosamund,  1592^,  1 594;  Cleopatra,  1594;  Civil  Wars,  1595- 
1609;  Musophilus,  1599;  Defense  of  Rime,  1602;  Vision  of  theTwelve 
Goddesses,  1604;  Philotas,  1605;  The  Queen's  Arcadia,  1606;  Tethys' 
Festival,  1610;  History  of  England,  1612-1617;  Hymen's  Triumph, 
1615.  Five  collective  edd.  of  varying  contents,  1599  to  1623.  Ed. 
Grosart,  Huth  Library,  1885,  5  vols.;  Selections  with  Drayton,  H.  C. 
Beaching,  1899.     Inedited  Poems,  Philobiblon  Soc,  1854. 

Davies,  John  (of  Hereford),  i565?-i6i8.  Microcosmus,  1603; 
Wit's  Pilgrimage,  1610-I1;  The  Scourge  of  Folly,  1611;  and  nine 
other  poetical  booklets  between  1602  and  1617.  The  Writing  School- 
master, first  known  ed.,  1633.  Collected  ed.  Grosart,  Chertsey 
Worthies'  Library,  1 878,  2  vols. 

Davies,  Sir  John,  1569-1626.  Orchestra,  1596,  1622;  Nosce 
Teipsum,  1599,  and  six  other  edd.  to  1697;  Epigrams,  n.  d.;  Hymns 
toAstraea,  1618.  Irish  tracts  and  legal  papers,  l6i2to  1656.  Coll. 
ed.  Grosart,  Fuller  Worthies'  Library,  1869-76,  3  vols.;  ed.  Morley, 
1889. 

Davison,  Francis,  i575.'-i6i9.  Poetical  Rhapsady,  1602,  1611, 
1 62 1,  repr.  BuUen,  1890,  2  vols. 

Day,  John,  1574-1640.  The  Isle  of  Gulls,  16062,  1633;  The 
Travails  of  Three  English  Brothers,  1 607;  Humor  out  of  Breath, 
1608;  Law  Tricks,  1608;  The  Parliament  of  Bees,  1641;  The  Blind 
Beggar  of  Bethnal  Green,  1659.  Collected  ed.  Bullen,  1881,  2  vols. 
See  also  Nero  and  other  Plays,  Mermaid  Series,  1888. 

Dee,  Dr.  John,  i 527-1 608.  The  author  of  seventy-nine  works 
in  Latin  and  English  from  A  Supplication  for  the  Preservation  of 
Ancient  Writers  and  Monuments,  1 556,  to  The  Private  Diary  of  Dr. 
Dee,  first  printed  by  Halliwell-Phillipps,  Camden  Society,  1842,  and 
later  in  part  by  J.  E.  Bailey,  1880. 

Dekker,    Thomas,     1570  .''-1641  .^     Twenty     pamphlets     from 


434 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Canaan's  Calamity,  1598,  1618,  to  Wars,  Wars,  Wars,  1628;  chief 
among  them  The  Wonderful  Tear,  The  Bachelor's  Banquet,  both  1603; 
The  Dead  Term,  The  Bellman  of  London,  both  1608;  Lanthorn  and 
Candlelight,  1608,  1609;  Four  Birds  of  Noah's  Ark,  1609,  The  Gulls' 
Hornbook,  1609,  repr.  the  King's  Classics,  1895.  Old  Fortunatus, 
Comedy  of,  1600;  The  Shoemakers'  Holiday,  1600,  six  edd.  to  1657; 
Satiromastix,  1602;  Patient  Grissel,  1 603;  The  Honest  Whore,  1604, 
six  edd.  to  1635;  Northward  Hoe,  1 607;  Westward  Hoe,  1 607;  The 
Whore  of  Babylon,  1607;  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt,  1607,  1612;  //  It  be  Not 
Good  the  Devil  is  in  It,  1 61 2;  2nd  part  of  The  Honest  Whore,  1630; 
Match  Me  in  London,  1631;  The  Wonder  of  a  Kingdom,  1636.  Four 
pageants,  one  for  King  James,  the  rest  for  the  Lord  Mayors,  between 
1604  and  1629.  ^^^  Percy  Soc,  x.  Collective  edd:  Dramas,  ed. 
Shepherd,  1873,  4  vols.;  Mermaid  ed.  five  plays,  1887.  Non-dramatic 
Works,  ed.  Grosart,  1884,  5  vols. 

Deloney,  Thomas,  i 543-1 600.  The  Gentle  Craft,  1598,  many 
edd.  to  1696,  repr.  Lange,  Palcestra,  xviii,  1903;  Thomas  of  Reading, 
[1599  lost],  six  edd.  to  1636,  repr.  Thorns,  Early  English  Prose  Roman- 
ces, 1858.  The  Garland  of  Good  Will,  1604,  eight  edd.  to  1664,  repr. 
Percy  Soc,  xxx,  1853;  Strange  Histories,  1607,  four  edd.  to  l68i; 
John  of  Newberry,  eighth  ed.  1619,  ten  others  to  1672,  repr.  R.  Sievers, 
PalcEstra,  xxxvi,  1904.     Broadside  ballads,  betvpeen  1583  and  1591. 

De  Vere,  Edward,  see  Oxford,  Earl  of. 

Dickenson,  John,  fl.  1594.  The  Shepherd's  Complaint  (in 
hexameters),  n.  d.;  Arisbas,  Euphues  amidst  his  Slumbers,  both  1594; 
Greene  in  Conceipt,  1598.     Repr.  Grosart,  Occasional  Issues,  vi.,  1878. 

Donne,  John,  1573-1631.  Ignatius  his  Conclave,  Biathanatos, 
1608;  Pseudo  Martyr,  1610;  An  Anatomy  of  the  World,  l6ll,  1612, 
1621,  1625;  Elegy  on  Prince  Henry,  1613;  Various  Sermons  singly 
issued,  1623-33;  Mo^^^  Sentences,  1631;  His  Funeral  Sermon,  1632 
and  other  edd.;  Poems,  1633,  six  edd.  to  1669;  Eighty  Sermons,  1640; 
Fifty  Sermons,  1649;  Essays  in  Divinity,  1 651;  Letters  to  Several 
Persons,  1651,  1654;  Twenty-six  Sermons,  1669.  Collected  edd. 
Grosart,  1872,  2  vols.;  ed.  E.  K.  Chambers,  The  Muses'  Library, 
1896,  2  vols. 

DowLAND,  John,  1563  ?-l626  ?.  The  First  Book  of  Songs,  1597, 
five  edd.  to  1613;  The  Second  Book  of  Songs,  1600;  The  Third  and  Last 
Book  of  Songs,  1603;  A  Pilgrim's  Solace,  1612,  all  in  Garner,  Shorter 
Poems,  1903. 

Drama.  See  F.  E.  Schelling,  Elizabethan  Drama,  1908,  2  vols., 
where  a  comprehensive  Bibliography  of  the  subject  will  be  found. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  435 

See  also  W.  W.  Greg,  A  List  of  English  Plays,  Bibliographical  Society, 
1900. 

Drant,  Thomas,  d.  1580.  Latin  verses  and  English  sermons, 
1564  to  1574.  Horace,  his  Art  of  Poetry,  Epistles  and  Satires  Eng- 
lished, 1567;  parts  of  the  Iliad  unpublished. 

Drayton,  Michael,  1563-1631.  The  Harmony  of  the  Church, 
1 59 1,  Percy  Soc,  1843,  vol.  vii.;  Idea  the  Spheherd's  Garland,  1593, 
1606,  repr.  Spenser  Soc,  1891,  3rd  ed.  1619,  repr.  Garner,  Sonnets,  ii, 
1904,  4th  ed.  1620;  Legends  of  Gaveston,  Matilda,  Robert  of  Normandy, 
Cromwell,  each  separate,  1 594-1 607  in  several  edd.;  Idea's  Mirror, 
1594,  seven  edd.  to  1620,  repr.  Garner,  Sonnets,  ii,  1904,  and  often 
elsewhere,  ed.  Esdaile,  with  Daniel's  Delia,  1908;  Mortimeriados, 
1596  (repr.  Collier,  Roxburghe  Club,  1856),  altered  into  The  Barons' 
Wars,  1603,  1605  (repr.  Spenser  Soc,  Poems,  1888);  England's 
Heroical  Epistles,  1 598,  five  other  edd.  variously  combined  to  1603; 
The  Owl,  1604;  Polyolbion,  1 61 3,  completed  in  1622  (repr.  Hooper, 
1876,  3  vols.);  The  Battle  of  Agincourt,  ibzj  (repr.  Garnett,  1893); 
The  Muses'  Elizium,  1630  (repr.  with  Nymphidia,  1896);  and  nine 
other  separate  pubHcations  in  verse.  Ten  collective  edd.  of  varying 
contents  between  1605  and  1637. 

The  dramas  of  Drayton  are  lost,  except  possibly  for  his  share  in 
The  Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton,  1608,  Dodsley,  x;  and  Sir  John  Old- 
castle,  1600.  A  complete  ed.  of  Drayton,  projected  by  Hooper, 
gave  out  on  the  completion  oi  Polyolbion  and  Hymns  of  the  Church, 
1876,  3  vols.;  Selections:  by  Bullen,  1883;  by  Garnett,  The  Battle  of 
Agincourt,  1 893;  Nymphidia  and  The  Muses'  Elizium,  1896.  Selec- 
tions, with  Daniel,  ed.  Beaching,  1899.  See  also  YAton,  Introduction 
to  Drayton,  1895,  and  Whitaker,  Drayton  as  a  Dramatist,  Publ.  Mod. 
Lang.  Asso.,  1903. 

Drummond,  William  (of  Hawthomden),  1 585-1 649.  Tears  on 
the  Death  of  Meliades,  1613,  1614;  Poems,  1616-,  1656,  1659;  Forth 
Feasting,  1617;  Flowers  of  Sion,  1623,  1630^;  The  Cypress  Grove, 
1623,  ^^55'  Entertainment  of  King  Charles,  1633;  History  of  Scotland, 
1655;  Works  collected  by  Ruddiman,  171 1;  Conversations  with  Ben 
Jonson,  Sh.  Soc,  1842.  Modem  ed.  Turnbull,  1890;  ed.  W.  C.  Ward, 
Muses'  Library,  1 894,  2  vols.;  see  also  Masson,  Drummond  of  Haw- 
thomden, 1873. 

Dyer,  Sir  Edward,  i  540-1 607.  See  Hznnzh,  Raleigh  and  Other 
Courtly  Poets,  1 875,  and  ed.  Grosart,  Fuller  Worthies'  Library,  iv, 
1872. 

Eden,  Richard,  1521  .''-1576.     The  Decades  of  the  New  World, 


\ 


436  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

1555;  The  History  of  Travel,  1577;  and  other  translations  of  voyages 
and  science.  See  Arber,  The  First  Three  English  Books  on  America, 
1885. 

Edwards,  Richard,  I523?-I566.  Damon  and  Pithias,  1571, 
Dodsley,  i;  and  see  Miscellanies. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  1533-1603.  Various  translations,  ed.  C. 
Pemberton,  Early  English  Text  Soc,  1899;  see  Fliigel  in  Anglia, 
xiv,  1891.     For  specimens  of  the  queen's  letters,  Camden  Soc,  1849. 

England's  Parnassus,  see  Allott,  Robert. 

Essay,  The.  See  Bibliography,  Cambridge  History,  1910,  vol.  iv; 
also  Littleboy,  Relations  between  French  and  English  Literature,  1 895; 
and  Upham,  French  Influence  in  English  Literature,  1908. 

Euphuism,  see  C.  G.  Child,  fohn  Lyly  and  Euphuism,  Miinchener 
Beitrage,  vii,  1894;  Bond,  Works  of  Lyly,  1902,  3  vols.;  Fuillerat, 
John  Lyly,  1910. 

Every  Woman  in  her  Humor,  1609,  BuUen's  Old  Plays,  iv. 

Fair  Em  [n.  d.],  1631;  Simpson,  School  of  Shakspere,  1878,  vol. 
ii. 

Fairfax,  Edward,  d.  1635.  Godfrey  of  Bulloigne,  1600,  1624, 
repr.  Routledge,  British  Poets,  1868;  Twelve  Eclogues,  in  part  first 
printed  in  Cooper's  Muses'  Library,  1737.  See  Anglia,  xii. 
.,./  Fenton,  Sir  Geoffrey,  1539  ?-i6o8.  Certain  Tragical  Dis- 
courses, 1567,  repr.  Tudor  Translations,  2  vols.,  1898;  Guevara's 
Golden  Epistles,  1575,  1577,  1582;  The  History  of  Guicciardini, 
1579,  and  other  translations. 

Fiction,  Elizabethan,  see  Jusserand,  The  English  Novel  in  the 
Reign  of  Elizabeth,  1895;  and  Bibliography  in  Cambridge  History  of 
Literature,  vol.  iii. 

Field,  Nathaniel,  i  587-1633.  A  Woman  is  a  Weathercock, 
1612;  Amends  for  Ladies,  1618,  1639;  ed.  Mermaid,  Nero  and  Other 
Plays,  [n.  d.]. 

Fitzgeoffrey,  Charles,  fl.  1601.  Affaniae  (Latin  epigrams), 
1 60 1.  Ed.  Grosart,  Occasional  Issues,  xvi,  1881.  Also  Sir  Francis 
Drake,  1 596. 

Fletcher,  Giles  (the  elder),  1549  ?-i6ii.  OftheRusse  Common- 
wealth, 1 591,  Hakluyt  Soc,  ed.  E.  A.  Bond,  1856;  Licia  and  The 
Rising  to  the  Crown  of  Richard  III,  1 593,  repr.  Grosart,  Fuller 
Worthies'  Miscellanies,  iii,   1872;   Licia   also   in   Garner,  Sonnets,  ii. 

Fletcher,  Giles  (the  younger),  1588-1623.  Christ's  Victory  and 
Triumph,  1610,  1632,  1640.  Ed.  Grosart,  Early  English  Poets, 
1876;  ed.  W.  T.  Brooke,  n.  d. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


437 


Fletcher,  John,  1579-1625  (including  plays  with  Beaumont). 
The  Woman  Hater,  16072,  1 648,  1 649;  The  Faithful  Shepherdess,  n. 
d.,  five  edd.  to  1665;  The  Knight  of  the  Burning  Pestle,  1613,  1635'; 
Cupid's  Revenge,  1615,  1630,  1635;  The  Scornful  Lady,  1616,  seven 
edd.  to  1651;  The  Maid's  Tragedy,  1619,  seven  edd.  to  1661;  King 
and  No  King,  1619,  seven  edd.  to  1661;  Philaster,  1620,  seven  edd. 
to  1652;  Thierry  and  Theodoret,  1621,  1648,  1649;  ^^^  Two  Noble 
Kinsmen  (with  Shakespeare  ?)  1634;  The  Elder  Brother,  1637^,  five 
edd.  to  1661;  The  Bloody  Brother,  1639,  ^^40;  Monsieur  Thomas, 
1639;  ff'it  Without  Money,  1639,  1661;  The  Night  Walker,  1640, 
1661;  Rule  a  ffife  and  Have  a  Wife^  1640;  Beggars'  Bush,  1641'; 
The  Wild  goose  Chase,  1652  (foLo  form).  Collected  edd.  First  folio, 
1647,  contains  thirty-four  other  plays;  the  following  are  mentioned  in 
the  text:  The  Woman's  Prize,  The  Coxcomb,  The  Captain,  Love's 
Cure,  Wit  at  Several  Weapons,  The  Chances,  Bonduca,  Valentinian. 
Second  folio,  1679,  reprints  all  the  plays  of  the  first  folio  and  all  of  the 
quartos  just  enumerated  except  Beggar's  Bush;  it  adds  The  Coronation 
from  the  quarto  of  1640,  a  play  later  claimed  by  Shirley.  Third 
folio  (repr.  of  the  second),  171 1.  Critical  edd.  begin  with  Theobald 
and  others,  1750,  10  vols.;  and  continue  to  Weber,  1812,  14  vols.; 
and  Dyce,  1843-46,  11  vols.  Recent  edd.  are  that  of  A.  Glover, 
Cambridge  English  Classics,  1905,  10  vols,  to  date;  and  the  Variorum 
Ed.  by  various  scholars  (Bullen),  also  1905  and  not  yet  completed. 
Barnavelt  was  first  printed  by  Bullen,  Old  English  Plays,  ii,  1883. 

Fletcher,  Phineas,  1582-1650.  Locustae,  1627;  Britain's  Ida, 
1628;  Sicelides,  1631;  The  Purple  Island,  Piscatory  Eclogues,  Mis- 
cellanies, etc.,  1633;  other  lesser  books.  Poems,  ed.  Grosart,  Fuller 
Worthies'  Miscellanies,  1869,  4  vols. 

Florio,  John,  I  553-1 625.  Italian  and  English  Dictionary, 
\^q^;  Montaigne's  Essays  Englished,  1603,1613,  repr.  J.H.Mc  Carthy, 
1889.  Ed.  Saintsbury,  Tudor  Translations,  1892-93.  Other  works 
between  1578  and  1603. 

Ford,  Emanuel,  fl.  1607.  Parismus,  1598,  2nd  part,  1599,  many 
subsequent  edd.;  Ornatus  and  Artesia,  1607  ^^^  other  edd.;  Montelion^ 
earlier  edd.  lost,  1633,  and  later  edd.  See  Dunlop,  History  of  Fiction, 
1814. 

Forman,  Dr.  Simon,  1552-1611.  Diary,  Camden  Society,  1843. 
The  parts  relating  to  Shakespeare  were  first  reprinted  by  Collier, 
New  Particulars,  etc.,  1 836. 

FoRTESCUE,  Thomas,  fl.  1570.  The  Forest  or  Collection  of  His- 
tories, i^ji.     Not  reprinted. 


\ 


438  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

FoXE,  John,  1516-1587.  Acts  and  Monuments  (Book  of  Martyrs), 
1562,  and  eight  other  edd.  to  1684.  Earlier  Latin  edd.  Strassburg, 
1554;  Basel,  1559-1562.  Ed.  Stoughton,  1877,  8  vols.  Christus 
Triumphans,  1556,  five  later  edd.  to  1677. 

Fraunce,  Abraham,  fl.  1587-1633.  Tasso-Watson,  Aminta, 
transl.  1587;  The  Arcadian  Rhetoric,  1588;  The  Lawyer's  Logic,  1 588; 
The  Countess  of  Pembroke's  Emanuel,  1591;  repr.  Grosart,  Fuller 
Worthies'  Miscellanies,  iii.  1871;  The  Countess  of  Pembroke's  Ivy- 
church,  1591-92;  and  other  works. 

Gager,  William,  fl.  1580-1619.  Ulysses  Redux,  Meleager,  both 
1592.     Other  works  not  printed. 

Gascoigne,  George,  1525  ^-l^jy.  A  Hundreth  Sundry  Flowers, 
1572;  The  Posies  ofG.,  1575;  The  Whole  Works,  1587.  These  contain 
The  Steel  Glass,  separately  published,  1576,  repr.  Arber,  English 
Reprints,  1868;  the  plays,  Supposes,  Jocasta,  The  Glass  of  Government, 
1575;  The  Adventures  of  Master  F.  I.  1572;  and  Certain  Notes  of  In- 
struction; besides  other  tracts.  Ed.  CunliflFe,  Cambridge  English 
Classics,  1907-9,  2  vols.  See  also  Schelling,  Life  and  Writings  of  G., 
1893. 

GiFFORD,  Humphrey,  fl.  1580.  A  Poste  of  Gilliflowers,  1580; 
ed.  Grosart,  Occasional  Issues,  1875. 

Gilbert,  Sir  Humphrey,  1539  ?-i583.  Discourse  of  a  New 
Passage  to  Cataia,  edited  by  Gascoigne,  1576;  Queen  Elizabeth's 
Academy,  pr.  E.  E.  Text  Soc,  1869. 

GoLDiNG,  Arthur,  l536?-l6o5?.  Seneca  de  Benefidis,  1558; 
Aretino's  History  of  the  Goths  in  Italy,  1 563;  Caesar,  transl.  1565; 
Ovid's  Metamorphosis,  1 565,  1 567,  repr.  The  King's  Library,  ed. 
Rouse,  1904. 

Googe,  Barnabe,  1540-1594.  Eclogues,  Epitaphs  and  Sonnets, 
1563;  ed.  Arber,  Reprints,  1871.     Various  translations,  1560  to  1579. 

GOSSON,  Setphen,  1555-1624.  The  School  of  Abuse,  1579,  1587, 
repr.  Arber,  Reprints,  1868;  Ephimerides  of  Phialo,  1579,  1586; 
Plays  Confuted,  1 582;  Pleasant  Quips  for  Upstart  New-Fangled 
Gentlewomen,  1595- 

GouGH,  Henry,  fl.  1570.  Offspring  of  the  House  of  the  Otto- 
mans, 1570. 

Grafton,  Richard,  fl.  1543-1595.  Besides  edd.  of  Harding's 
and  of  Hall's  Chronicles,  1543  and  1548,  in  which  Grafton  was  printer 
and  reviser;  Abridgment  of  Chronicles,  1562,  five  edd.  to  1572J 
Chronicle  at  Large  of  England,  1586-69,  2  vols.,  two  edd.  Manual  of 
English  History,  1595. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  439 

Greene,  Robert,  I56o?-i592.  Thirty  pamphlets  between 
MamilHa,  [1580],  1583;  and  Greene's  Vision,  1592,  chief  among  them 
Planetomachta,  1585;  Euphues  his  Censure  to  Philautus,  1587; 
Penelope's  Web,  1 587;  Perimedes,  1 588;  Pandosto,  1588,  ed.  P.  G. 
Thomas,  Shakespeare  Classics,  1907;  Atenaphon,  1589;  The  Spanish 
Masquerado,  1589;  The  Mourning  Garment,  1590,  1616;  Farewell  to 
Folly,  1591,  1617;  Philomela,  1592,  1631;  A  Quip  for  an  Upstart 
Courtier,  1592^,  1606,  1620,  1635;  the  Conycatching  tracts,  1592. 
The  Black  Book's  Messenger,  1 592,  A  Groatsworth  of  Wit,  1592, 
eight  edd.  to  1637,  repr.  Saintsbury,  Elizabethan  and  Jacobean 
Pamphlets,  1902;  Greene's  Repentance,  1592. 

Friar  Bacon  and  Friar  Bungay,  1 594,  four  edd.  to  1 655;  ed.  A.  W. 
Ward,  with  Faustus,  1892;  Orlando  Furioso,  1594,  1599;  Selimus, 
1594,  1638,  both  in  Malone  Soc,  1907,  1908;  James  IF,  1598;  Al- 
phonsus  of  Aragon,  1599;  George  a  Greene,  1 599,  doubtfully  accepted 
as  by  G.  Life  and  Complete  Works,  ed.  Grosart,  Huth  Library,  1881- 
86,  15  vols.;  Plays  and  Poems,  ed.  J.  C.  Collins,  1905,  2  vols.; 
Dramas,  ed.  Dickinson,  Mermaid  Series,  1909. 

Greville,  Sir  Fulke  (Lord  Brooke),  1554-1628.  Mustapha, 
1609,  Certain  Learned  and  Elegant  Works,  1633;  Life  of  Sidney, 
1652;  repr.  ed.  Brydges,  1816,  2  vols.;  also  by  N.  Smith,  1907.  Re- 
mains, 1670.     Collective  ed.  Grosart,  1870,  4  vols. 

Griffin,  Bartholomew,  d.  1602.  Fidessa,  1596,  Garner, 
Sonnets,  ii. 

Grim  the  Collier  of  Cro\don,  GratiaeTheatrales,  1662,  Dodsley,  viii. 

Grimald,  Nicholas,  1519-1562.       See  Miscellanies. 

Grimestone,  Edward,  fl.  1610.  General  Inventory  of  the  His- 
tory of  France,  1607;  History  of  the  Netherlands,  1608;  History  of 
Spain,  1612;  and  other  like  works,  none  reprinted.  See  Boas  in 
Modern  Philology,  iii,  1 90 5. 

Grove,  Matthew,  fl.  1587.  Pelops  and  Hippodamia,  Epigrams, 
Songs  and  Sonnets,  1 587.     Repr.  Grosart,  Occasional  Issues,  1878. 

GuiLPiN,  Edward,  fl.  1598.  Skialetheia,  1598,  repr.  Collier 
Miscellaneous  Tracts,   1868;  and  Grosart,  Occasional  Issues,  1878. 

GwiNNE,  Matthew,  1558  ?-l627.  Nero,  1603,  1639;  Vertumnus, 
1607;  other  works,  J.  Ward,  Lives  of  Gresham  Professors,  1740. 

Hake,  Edward,  fl.  1579.  News  Out  of  Paul's  Churchyard, 
1568,  1579,  Isham  Reprints,  1872;  many  devotional  and  commenda- 
tory works. 

Hakluyt,  Richard,  I552?-i6i6.  Divers  Voyages  Touching 
America,  1582,  ed.  J.  W.  Jones,  Hakluyt  Soc,  1850;  Four  Voyages 


440  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

into  Florida,  1 587;  The  Principal  Navigations,  1 589,  enlarged  1598- 
1600,  3  vols.  repr.  ed.  Goldsmid,  1884;  new  ed.  Glasgow,  1903-05, 
12  vols.;  Galvano's  Discovery  of  the  World,  1601;  repr.  Bethune,  1862; 
Virginia  Richly  Valued,  1609,  ed.  Rye,  W.  B.,  1851;  Discourse  con- 
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Historical  Society,  ed.  Woods,  1831,  ed.  Deane,  Hakluyt  Soc,  1877. 

Hall,  Arthur,  1540  .''-1604.       Ten  Books  of  Homer's  Iliad,  1581. 

Hall,  Joseph,  i  574-1 656.  Virgidemiarum  Six  Books,  1597- 
98,  1599,  1602;  Mundus  Alter  et  Idem,  1605,  1607,  transl.  by  Healey 
as  The  Discovery  of  a  New  World,  1608,  repr.  Morley,  Universal 
Library,  1885;  Characters  of  Virtues  and  Vices,  1608;  Epistles,  1608, 
2  vols.;  Contemplations  on  Scriptures,  1612-1626,6  vols.  Works,  ed. 
Wynter,  1863,  10  vols.;  Poems,  ed.  Grosart,  1879;  Satires,  ed.  S.  W. 
Singer,  The  Muses*  Library,  1907. 

Hannay,  Patrick,  d.  1629.  Epigrammaton  Centuriae  Sex, 
1616;  other  later  verses.  Collective  ed.,  1622,  repr.  Hunterian  Club, 
1875. 

Harbert,  William,  fl.  1604.  A  Prophecy  of  Cadwallader,  1604. 
Ed.  Grosart,  Fuller  Worthies'  Library,  1870. 

Harington,  Sir  John,  1561-1612.  Orlando  Furioso,  transl. 
1591,  1607,  1634.  {Apology  of  Poetry  prefixed,  repr.  Haslewood. 
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1634.  Various  political  and  other  tracts,  most  important  a  View  of 
Ireland  in  1605,  ed.  Macray,  1879;  Nugae  Antiquae,  1769-75,  ed. 
Park,  1804. 

Harman,  Thomas,  fl.  1567.  A  Caveat  for  Common  Cursetors, 
1566  (lost),  1567.  Repr.  New  Sh.Soc,  1880,  and  The  Shakespeare 
Library,  1907. 

Harrison,  William,  1534-1593.  Description  of  England,  pre- 
fixed to  Holinshed's  Chronicles,  lS77>  ^5^7'  ^^-  Furnivall,  New  Sh. 
Soc,  1877-1881.     Abridgement,  Camelot  Series,  n.  d. 

Harvey,  Gabriel,  1545?-i630.  Various  Letters,  1580,  1592, 
1593;  Pierce's  Supererogation,  1593;  The  Trimming  of  Thomas 
Nash,  1597.  Latin  works,  1577-78.  Collected  ed.  Grosart,  Huth 
Library,  1884-85,  3  vols. 

Haughton,  William,  fl.  1598.  A  Woman  will  Have  her  Will, 
1616,  1626,  1631,  otherwise  called  Englishmen  for  my  Money,  Dodsley, 

X. 

Hayward,  Sir  John,  1564-1627.  History  of  Henry  IV,  1599; 
Union  of  England  and  Scotland,  1604;  Lives  of  Three  Norman  Kings, 
1613;  Sanctuary  of  a  Troubled  Soul,  1616,  many  edd.;  other  devotional 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  441 

pamphlets;  Edward  VI,  1630,  1636;  Beginning  of  the  Reign  of  Eliza- 
beth, 1636  (Camden  Society,  repr.  1840);  History  of  Henry  HI  and 
IV,  with  Cotton,  1642. 

Henslowe,  Philip,  d.  1616.  Henslowe's  Diary,  ed.  Colh'er,  Sh. 
Soc,  1845  (unsafe);  ed.  Greg,  1904-1908,  2  vols,  (authoritative). 

Heywood,  Jasper,  i 535-1 598.     See  Seneca  Translated. 

Heywood,  Thomas,  1575  ?-i650.  Edward  IV,  1600,  five  edd.  to 
1626;  //  Tou  Know  Not  Me,  1605,  eight  edd.  to  1623;  A  Woman 
Killed  with  Kindness,  1607,  1617;  The  Fair  Maid  of  the  Exchange, 
1607,  three  edd.  to  1637;  The  Rape  of  Lucrece,  1608,  four  edd.  to 
1638;  The  Golden  Age,  1611;  The  Silver  Age,  1613;  The  Brazen  Age, 
1613;  The  Four  Prentices  of  London,  1615,  1632;  The  Fair  Maid  of  the 
West,  1631;  The  Iron  Age,  1632;  The  English  Traveller,  1633; 
The  Lancashire  Witches,  1634;  A  Maidenhead  Well  Lost,  1634; 
Love's  Mistress,  1636,  1640;  A  Challenge  for  Beauty,  1636;  Royal 
King  and  Loyal  Subject,  1637;  The  Wise  Woman  of  Hogsdon,  1638; 
Fortune  by  Land  and  Sea,  1655;  The  Captives,  Bullen,  Old  Plays,  iv, 
1883. 

Troia  Britannica,  1609;  An  Apology  for  Actors,  l6l2,  repr. 
Sh.  Soc,  1841;  Gunaikaion,  1624;  England's  Elizabeth,  1632;  The 
Hierarchy  of  Blessed  Angels,  1 635;  Pleasant  Dialogues  and  Dramas, 
1637;  The  General  History  of  Women,  1 657.  Elegies,  Epithalamia, 
six  city  Pageants  (for  which  see  Percy  Society,  x,  1843),  additional 
translations  and  pamphlets.  Dramatic  Works,  ed.  Pearson,  1874,  6 
vols. 

HiGGlNS,  John,  i  545-1602.     See  Mirror  for  Magistrates. 

Histriomastix,  1610,  probably  by  Marston,  School  of  Shakspere, 
1878. 

HoBY,  Sir  Thomas,  1530-1566.  The  Courtier  of  Count  Baldessar 
Castilio,  1561,  five  edd.  to  1603.     Repr.  Tudor  Translations,  1900. 

HoLlNSHED,  Ralph,  d.  1580  ?.  Chronicles  of  England,  Scotland, 
and  Ireland,  lS77f  1586-87.  Repr.  1807-08,  6  vols.  See  also  Bos- 
well-Stone,  Shakespeare's  Ilolinshed,  1896. 

Holland,  Philemon,  1552-1637.  Livy's  Roman  History,  1600; 
Pliny's  History  of  the  World,  1601 ;  Plutarch's  Morals,  1603;  Suetonius, 
Twelve  Caesars,  1606,  repr.  Tudor  Translations,  ed.  Whibley,  1899; 
Marcellinus,  Roman  History,  1609;  Camden's  Britannia,  Englished, 
1610;  Xenophon's  Cyropaedia,  1632. 

HoLYDAY,  Barten,  1593-1661.  Persius'  Satires,  translated,  1616, 
1617,  1635,  1673;  Technogamia,  a  comedy,  1618,  1630;  and  other 
later  works. 


442  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Hooker,  Richard,  i  554-1 600.  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  four  books, 
1594.  1604;  Book  V,  161 1,  1617;  Books  VI,  VIII,  1648,  1651;  Book 
VII,  1862.  Sermons  and  Tracts,  ed.  Church  and  Paget,  1888,  3 
vols.     For  Bibliography  see  Cambridge  History  of  Literature,  iii. 

Hopkins,  Richard,  d.  1594?.  Granada's  Prayer  and  Medita- 
tion, 1582,  1592,  1612;  Granada's  Memorial  of  a  Christian  Life,  1586, 
1599,  1612,  1625. 

Howell,  Thomas,  fl.  1568,  New  Sonnets  and  Pretty  Pamphlets, 
1567-68;  The  Arhor  of  Amity,  1 568;  Howell  his  Devise,  1 58 1.  Ed. 
Grosart,  Occasional  Issues,  viii. 

Hughes,  Thomas,  fl.  1587.  The  Misfortunes  of  Arthur,  1587,  ed. 
Grumbine,  1900. 

Hume,  Tobias,  d.  1645.  ^^^^^  P^^^  °f  ^"'^'  1605;  Captain 
Hume's  Musical  Humors,  1607.  See  Rimbault,  Bibliotheca  Madriga- 
liana,  1847. 

HuNNis,  William,  fl.  1 530-1 597.  A  Hive  full  of  Hunney,  1578; 
Seven  Sobs,  1583;  Hunnis'  Recreations,  1588.  See  Slopes,  in  Sh. 
Jahrbuch,  xxvii,  and  repr.  1892  for  an  account  of  Hunnis. 

Jack  Drum's  Entertainment,   160I,  School  of  Shakspere,   1878. 

James  I,  King,  1566-1625.  Essays  of  a  Prentice,  1584,  repr. 
Arber,  Reprints,  1869;  Demonology,  1597;  Basilikon  Doron,  1599; 
True  Law  of  free  Monarchies,  1603;  A  Counterblast  to  Tobacco,  1604; 
religious  meditations  and  political  tracts.  Collected  ed.  1616,  1619, 
1689;  a  convenient  ed.  of  extracts  by  Rait,  A  Royal  Rhetorician,  1900. 

J.  C,  Alcilia,  Parthenophen's  Loving  Folly,  1595.  Repr.  W. 
Wagner,  Sh.  Jahrbuch,  x,  1875.     Garner,  Longer  Poems,  1903. 

Jewell,  John  (Bishop  of  Salisbury)  1522-1571.  Works,  1609. 
Ed.  Ayre,  1845-50,  4  vols. 

John,  The  Troublesome  Reign  of  King,  1591.  Ed.  Furnival, 
facsimile  repr.  1888. 

Johnson,  Richard,  1573-1659  ?.  The  Nine  Worthies  of  London, 
1592;  The  Seven  Champions  of  Christendom,  1596-97,  fourteen  edd. 
to  1690;  A  Crown  Garland  of  Golden  Roses,  1 61 2,  seven  edd.  to  1685, 
repr.  Percy  Soc,  vi,  1842;  Walks  in  Moorfelds,  1607;  Look  on  Me, 
London,  1613;  both  repr.  in  Collier,  Early  English  Popular  Poetry, 
vol.  ii,  1864;  Tom  Thumb,  1621;  Tom  a  Lincoln,  1631,  twelve  edd.  to 
1682.     Several  other  like  pamphlets. 

Jones,  Robert,  d.  1616.  Book  of  Songs,  1601;  First  Set  of  Madri- 
gals, 1607;  Ultimum  Vale,  1 608;  A  Musical  Dream,  1609;  The  Muses' 
Garden  of  Delights,  1610,  ed.  W.  B.  Squire,  1901. 

JoNSON,  Ben,  1573-1635.     Every  Man  Out  of  his  Humor,  1600^; 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  443 

Cynthia's  Revels,  1601;  Every  Man  In  his  Humor,  1601;  Poetaster, 
1602;  Sejanus,  1605;  Eastward  Hoe  (with  Chapman  and  Marston), 
1605^;  Volpone,  1607;  The  Case  is  Altered,  1609^;  Cattline,  l6ll, 
1635;  The  Alchemist,  1612;  The  Silent  Woman,  1612  ?,  1620.  (All 
in  foh'o  161 6  except  The  Case  is  Altered.) 

King  yames'  Entertainment,  1604;  Hymenal,  1606;  The  discount 
Haddington's  Masque,  1608;  The  Queen's  Masques  [of  Blackness  and 
of  Beauty],  1609,  The  Masque  of  Queens,  1609;  Love  Freed  from  Ignor- 
ance, 1612  ?;  Oberon,  Love  Restored,  Mercury  Vindicated,  The  Golden 
Age,znd  three  other  pieces,  folio  1616.  Epigrams,  The  Forest,  both 
folio  1 61 6. 

The  New  Inn,  1629,  1631 ;  Bartholomew  Fair,  four  other  comedies, 
The  Sad  Shepherd,  folio  1640;  The  Masque  of  Lethe,  1617;  Neptune's 
Triumph,  1623;  The  Fortunate  Isles,  [n.  d.];  Chloridia,  1 630  ?; 
Love's  Triumph,  1630;  these  and  twelve  other  masques  and  enter- 
tainments, folio  1640;  Execration  upon  Vulcan  and  Divers  Epigrams, 
quarto,  1640;  Horace  Art  of  Poetry,  The  Masque  of  Gipsies,  and 
Epigrams,  octavo,  1 640;  Discoveries,  English  Grammar,  folio  1640 
with  contents  of  folio  1616.  Leges  Convivales,  in  third  folio,  1692, 
with  all  the  foregoing.  Modern  collective  edd.,  GifFord,  1816,  9 
vols.;  Cunningham-GifFord,  1875,  9  vols;  Mermaid,  ed.,  n,  d.  3  vols. 
and  many  more.  See  especially  Swinburne,  A  Study  of  B.  J.,  1889; 
M.  Castelain,  Ben  Jonson,  1909. 

Knolles,  Richard,  i 550-1610.  General  History  of  the  Otto- 
man Turks,  1603. 

Kyd,  Thomas,  1557  .^-1595.  S oilman  and  Perseda  [1593  ?],  1599'; 
Spanish  Tragedy,  1 592  ?  twelve  quartos  to  1633,  repr.  ed.  Schick, 
Archive,  xc,  and  Temple  Dramatists,  iSgS;  Cornelia,  1594, 1595;  The 
First  Part  of  Jeronimo,  1605,  is  not  by  Kyd.  Three  pamphlets 
between  1588  and  1592.     Collective  ed.  Boas,  1901. 

Larum  for  London,  A,  l6l2,  Simpson.    School  of  Shakspere,  1872. 

Legge,  Thomas,  i 595-1607.     Richardus  Tertius,  Sh.  Soc,  1844. 

Leir,  The  History  of  King,  1605,  repr.  Malone  Society,  1907; 
also  Shakespeare  Classics,  ed.  S.  Lee,  1907. 

LiTHGOW,  William,  i  582-1645.  A  Total  Discourse  of  the  Rare 
Adventures  and  Painful  Pcrigrinations,  1614,  complete  in  1632. 

Locrine,  The  Tragedy  of,  1595,  repr.  Malone  Society,  1908.  See 
Pseudo-Shakespeare. 

Lodge,  Thomas,  i  558-1 625.  Defense  of  Poetry  and  Stage  Plays, 
1579,  repr.  Sh.  Soc,  1853;  An  Alarum  for  Usurers,  1584,  repr.  in  the 
same;  Rosalynd,  1590  and  eight  other  edd.  to  1642,  often  repr'd.,  ed. 


444  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Greg,  Shakespeare  Classics,  1 907,  and  sixteen  other  romances,  trans- 
lations, and  moral  tracts  including  A  Margaret  of  America,  and  Wit's 
Misery,  both  1596;  A  Treatise  on  the  Plague,  1603;  The  Works  of 
Seneca,  1614;  and  A  Summary  upon  Du  Bartas,  1621.  Scilla's 
Metamorphosis,  1589,  1610;  repr.  Chiswick  Press,  1819;  Phtllis, 
1593,  Garner  Sonnets,  ii;  A  Fig  for  Momus,  1595.  Repr.  Auchinleck 
Press,  1817.  The  Wounds  of  Civil  War,  1594,  Dodsley,  vii;  A  Look- 
ing-glass for  London,  1594,  1598,  1602,  1617.  Works,  ed.  Gosse 
(exclusive  of  the  plays),  Huntertan  Club,  1872-82. 

LoK,  Henry,  fl.  1 593-1 597.  Ecclesiastes,  whereunto  are  annexed 
sundry  Sonnets  of  Christian  Passions,  ed.  Grosart,  Fuller  Worthies' 
Library,  1 87 1. 

London  Prodigal,  1605,  Tyrrel,  Doubtful  Plays  of  Shakespeare. 
See  Pseudo-Shakespeare. 

Zmj/'j  Z)om;«ion,  "by  Marlowe,"  1657.  Ed.  Pickering, M<3r/ou'<', 
1826,  iii. 

Lyly,  John,  1553-4 — 1606.  Euphues,  iS79^  and  twelve  other 
edd.  to  1636;  Euphues  and  his  England,  1580^,  and  eleven  edd.  to 
1636.  Repr.  Arber,  1868.  Campaspe,  1584^,  1591;  Sapho  and  Phao, 
1584,  1591;  Endimion,  1591;  Gallathea,  1592;  Midas,  1592;  Mother 
Bombie,  1 594,  1 598;  The  Woman  in  the  Moon,  1597;  The  Maid's 
Metamorphosis,  1600;  Love's  Metamorphosis,  1 60 1.  Pap  with  a 
Hatchet,  1598,  has  been  attributed  to  L.  Collective  edd.:  Six 
Court  Comedies,  1632;  ed.  Fairholt,  1858,  2  vols.;  complete  Works, 
ed.  Bond,  1902,  3  vols.  See  also  A.  Feuillerat,  John  Lyly,  Rennes, 
1910. 

Lynche,  Richard,  fl.  1596-1601.  Diella,  Certain  Sonnets,  1596, 
repr.     Garner,  Sonnets,  1904;  The  Fountain  of  Ancient  Fiction,  1599. 

Lyrics,  Elizabethan.  Lyrical  Poems,  Percy  Society,  xiii,  1844; 
Arber,  English  Garner,  1879-83,  8  vols.;  Bullen,  Lyrics  from  Song 
Books,  1887,  More  Lyrics  from  Song  Books,  1888,  Lyrics  from  the 
Dramatists,  1889-90,  Lyrics  from  Romances,  1890,  Garner,  Shorter 
Elizabethan  Poems,  1903;  Schelling,  Book  of  Elizabethan  Lyrics,  1895; 
F.  I.  Carpenter,  English  Lyrical  Poetry,  1906. 

Machin,  Lewis,  fl.  1607.  Eclogues  with  Barkstead's  Mirrha, 
1607;  The  Dumb  Knight,  With.  Markham,  1 608, 1 633.  Repr.  Dodsley  x. 

Madrigal.  See  F.  A.  Cox,  English  Madrigals  in  the  Time  of 
Shakespeare,  1 899.  Also  T.  Oliphant,  Musa  Madrigalesca,  1 837, 
and  E.  F.  Rimbault,  Bibliotheca  Madrigaliana,  1 847. 

Manningham,  John,  d.  1622.  Diary,  ed.  Bruce,  Camden 
Society's  Publ,  1868. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  445 

Markham,  Gervais,  1568-1637.  Ariosto's  Satires,  1608,  161 1; 
thirty  or  more  pamphlets  on  horsemanship,  husbandry,  angling, 
archery,  the  art  of  letter-writing,  and  other  subjects  between  1593  and 
1654.  Repr.  Tears  of  the  Beloved,  1600;  Marie  Magdalene's  Tears, 
1601,  ed.  Grosart,  Fuller  Worthies'  Library,  1871. 

Marlowe,  Christopher,  1564-1593.  Tamburlaine,  1590,  1592, 
1605,  1606;  Edward  II,  1594,  four  quartos  to  1622;  Dido  (with  Nash) 
1594;  Hero  and  Leander,  1598^  seven  edd.  to  1637;  Lucan's  Pharsalia 
(Book  I),  1600;  Ovid's  Amores,  3  edd.  n.  d.  ;  Massacre  at  Paris, 
1600  ?;  Faustus,  1604  (first  extant  quarto)  and  seven  other  edd.  to 
lb^\;The  Jew  of  Malta,  1633  (first  extant  quarto).  Lust's  Dominion, 
1657,  is  not  Marlowe's.  Collective  edd.  Bullen,  1885,  3  vols.; 
Mermaid  ed.,  1887;  Breymann  and  Wagner,  1885-89;  C.  F.T.  Brooke, 
1910.     See  also  J.  H.  Ingram,  Marlowe  and  his  Associates,  1904. 

Marston,  John,  1576-1634.  Pigmalion's  Image,  1598,  1613, 
1638;  The  Scourge  of  Fillainv,  1598,  1599^.  Antonio  and  Mellida, 
1602;  The  Malcontent,  1604^;  The  Dutch  Courtezan,  1605;  The  Fawn, 
1606';  Sophonisba,  1606;  What  Tou  Will,  1607;  The  Insatiate  Count- 
ess, 1613,  1616,  1631;  one  or  two  other  plays  doubtfully  his,  and  two 
masques.  Tragedies  and  Comedies,  1633.  Works,  td.  Bullen,  1887,  3  vols. 

Martin  Marprelate  Controversy,  1587-1590.  Preliminary  works: 
A  Defence  of  the  Government,  by  Bridges,  1587;  Diotrephes,  by  J. 
Udall;  The  Demonstration  of  Discipline,  anon,  (both  Puritan  replies), 
1588.  Puritan  tracts:  The  Epistle;  The  Epitome;  A  Supplication  to 
Parliament,  by  Penry;  Hay  any  Work  for  Cooper;  The  Protestation; 
with  others,  in  all  nine  tracts,  all  1589.  Church  pamphlets:  An 
Admonition,  etc.,  by  T.  Cooper;  Mar-Martin;  Anti-Martinus;  Pas- 
quil  of  England;  Martin's  Month's  Mind;  Pap  with  a  Hatchet;  An 
Almond  for-a  Parrot;  with  other  tracts,  in  all  some  eighteen,  all  1589  or 
early  in  1590.  Bacon,  Controversies  of  the  Church,  1587.  On  the 
topic  see  Arber,  "Introductory  Sketch  to  the  M.  M.  Controversy," 
English  Scholars'  Library,  viii,  ix,  xi,  xv,  wherein  several  of  the 
tracts  are  reprinted.  See  also  W.  Pierce,  An  Historical  Introduc- 
tion to  the  Marprelate  Tract,  1908;  and  Bibliography  in  Cambridge 
History  of  Literature,  1909,  vol.  iii. 

Masque,  H.  A.  Evans,  English  Masques,  1897;  R.  Brotanek,  Z)/^ 
englischen  Maskenspiele,  Wiener  Beitrage,  1 902;  P.  Reyher,  Le 
Masque  Anglais,  1 909;  see  also  W.  W.  Greg,  A  List  of  Masques,  etc., 
1902. 

Melbancke,  Brian,  fl.  1583.  Philotimus,  the  War  betwixt 
Nature  and  Fortune,  1583.     See  Brydges,  British  Bibliographer,  ii. 


446  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Melville,  James,  i 556-1 614.  Diary,  pr.  for  the  Bannatyne 
Club,  1829. 

Melville,  Sir  James,  1535-1617.  Memoirs  of  his  own  Lifcy 
1683;  repr.  for  the  Bannatyne  Club,  1827. 

Meres,  Francis,  i 565-1 647.  Palladis  Tamia,  Wit's  Treasury, 
1598,  1634.  Repr.  in  part.  New  Sh.  Soc,  1874.  Also  certain  religious 
works. 

Merry  Devil  of  Edmonton,  1608,  five  edd.  to  1655.  See  Dray- 
ton. 

Microcynicon,  Six  Snarling  Satyres,  by  T.  M.  Gent,  1599.  (Not 
by  Middleton.) 

MiDDLETON,  Thomas,  i  570-1 627.  The  Wisdom  of  Solomon 
Paraphrased,  1597;  Blurt,  Master  Constable,  l6o2;  Michaelmas  Term, 
1607,  1630;  Tour  Five  Gallants,  1607  ?;  The  Phoenix,  1607,  1630; 
The  Family  of  Love,  1 608;  J  Trick  to  Catch  the  Old  One,  1 608  2, 
1 61 6;  A  Mad  World  my  Masters,  1 608,  1 640;  The  Roaring  Girl, 
161 1 ;  A  Fair  Quarrel,  1617^,  1622;  The  Inner  Temple  Masque,  1619; 
The  World  Well  Tossed  at  Tennis,  1620;  J  Game  at  Chess,  1625*; 
A  Chaste  Maid  in  Cheapside,  1630;  The  Changeling,  1653,  1668; 
The  Spanish  Gipsy,  1653;  Two  New  Plays:  More  Dissemblers  Besides 
Women,  Women  Beware  Women,  1657;  No  Wit,  No  Help  like  a 
Woman's,  1 657;  The  Mayor  of  Queenborough,  1 661;  Anything  for  a 
Quiet  Life,  1662;  The  Witch,  first  pr.  1778  by  Reed;  eight  pageants 
betvpeen  1613  and  1626.  See  Percy  Society,  x;  and  several  pamphlets. 
Works,  ed.  Dyce,  1840,  5  vols.;  Bullen,  1885,  8  vols. 

Mirror  for  Magistrates,  ed.  Baldwin,  1559,  1563  (Sackville's 
work  first  included),  1571,  1574,  1575,  1578;  The  First  Part  of  the  M. 
for  M.,  ed.  Higgins,  1574,  1575;  The  Second  Part  of  the  M.  for  M.,  ed. 
Blennerhasset,  1578;  The  M.  for  M.  "with  the  addition  of  divers 
tragedies,"  ed.  Newton,  1587;  M.  for  M.  "newly  enlarged,"  ed. 
Niccols,  1610.     Repr.  Haslewood,  1815,  3  vols. 

Miscellanies  (Lyrical).  Tottel's  Miscellany  (Songs  and  Sonnets 
by  Wyatt,  Surrey,  and  others,  ed.  Grimald),  1557,  seven  edd.  to  1587, 
repr.  Arber,  1870;  The  Paradise  of  Dainty  Devices,  ed.  Edwards, 
1576,  eight  edd.  to  1600,  repr.  Brydges,  British  Bibliographer,  iii, 
1810;  J  Gorgious  Gallery  of  Gallant  Inventions,  ed.  Proctor,  1578, 
repr.  Park,  Heliconia,  i,  18 15;  A  Handful  of  Pleasant  Delights,  ed. 
Robinson,  1584,  repr.  Arber,  English  Scholar's  Library,  iii,  1878; 
The  Phoenix  Nest,  editor  R.  S.  (unknown)  1593,  repr.  Heliconia,  ii; 
England's  Helicon,  ed.  Bodenham,  1600,  1614,  repr.  Bullen,  1887; 
A  Poetical  Rhapsody,  ed.  Davison,  1602,  161 1,  1621,  repr.  Bullen, 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  447 

i8qo,  2  vols.  Collective  ed.  Collier,  Seven  English  Miscellanies, 
1867,  includes  all  of  these  but  A  Handful  of  Pleasant  Delights. 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  Chronicle  History  of,  first  published  by  Dyce, 
Sh.  Soc,  1844  c<^-  Brooke,  Shakespeare  Apocrypha,  1908. 

MoRLEY,  Thomas,  fl.  1594.  Canzonets,  1593;  Madrigals,  1594, 
1600,  1601;  The  First  Book  of  Ballets,  1595,  and  ten  other  like  works 
to  The  Triumphs  of  Oriana,  1601,  repr.  Garner,  Shorter  Poems,  1903. 

MoRYSON,  Fynes,  1566-1616.  An  Itinerary  Containing  Ten 
Tears*  Travel,  1617.  Ed.  Hughes,  as  Shakespeare's  Europe,  1903; 
also  in  part  (as  to  Ireland)  in  1735  and  by  Morley,  Carisbrook  Library, 
1890. 

Mucedorus,  A  Most  Pleasant  Comedy  of,  1 598,  sixteen  edd.  to 
1668.     Dodsley,  vii. 

MuLCASTER,  Richard,  I530?-i6ii.  Positions  for  the  Training 
up  of  Children,  1581 ;  Elementary  of  the  Right  Writing  of  the  English 
Tongue,  1582;  Catechismus  Paulinus,  1 599.  See  Quick,  R.  M.  and 
his  Elementary,  1893;  Klackr,  Lehen  und  Werke  R.  M.'s,  1893. 

MuNDAY,  Anthony,  i  553-1 633.  A  score  of  pamphlets,  tracts, 
and  broadsides  verse  and  prose  from  1577  to  161 1,  chief  among  them 
The  Mirror  of  Mutability,  I579;  Sundry  Examples,  1580;  The  Taking 
of  Campion,  1 58 1,  etc.  M.'s  principle  stories  and  romances  trans- 
lated are,  T^lauto,  1580;  Paladtno  of  England,  1588;  Palmarin  d'Oliva, 
1588-1597;  Palmendos,  1589,  1653;  Amadis  de  Gaule,  1589-1619; 
Gerileon  of  England,  I592;  Sir  John  Oldcastle,  1600  (with  others); 
The  Downfall  and  The  Death  of  Robert  Earl  of  Huntingdon,  1601, 
repr.  Dodsley,  viii;  Palmerin  of  England,  1602,  five  edd.  to  1664; 
Primaleon  of  Greece,  1619,  (lost  ed.  1595);  John  a  Kent,  a  play,  pr. 
Sh.  Soc,  1851.  Civic  pageants,  eight  between  1605  and  1623,  see 
Percy  Soc.  Publ.,  x. 

Narcissus,  a  Twelfth  Night  Merriment,  ed.   M.   L.   Lee,   1893. 

Nash,  Thomas,  1567-1601.  The  Anatomy  of  Absurdity,  1589, 
1590;  A  Countercuff  to  Martin  Junior,  Martin  s  Month's  Mind, 
The  Return  of  Pasquil  of  England,  1 589;  PasquiVs  Apology,  1590, 
these  four  Marprelate  Tracts;  Astrological  Prognostications,  1591; 
Pierce  Penniless,  Four  Letters  Confuted,  both  1592,  the  last  repr.  1593; 
Christ's  Tears  over  Jerusalem,  1593,  1594,  1613;  The  Terrors  of  the 
Night,  1594;  The  Unfortunate  Traveler  or  Jack  Wilton,  1594,  repi. 
ed.  Gosse,  1892;  The  Tragedy  of  Dido,  1594  (pr.  in  edd.  of  Marlowe); 
Have  With  You  to  Saffron- Walden,  1596;  Lenten  Stuff,  1600;  Summer's 
Last  Will,  1600,  Dodsley^  viii.  Collective  ed.  Grosart,  Huth  Library, 
1883-85,  6  vols.;  McKerrow,   1904-08,  4  vols.     Several  of  Nash's 


448  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

tracts  were  reprinted  by  Collier  in  his  Reprints,  Temp.  Eliz.  and  Jac. 
I;  see  also  Selections  from  Elizabethan  Critical  Essays,  ed.  G.  G.  Smith, 
1904. 

Naunton,  Sir  Robert,  1563-1635.  Fragmenta  Regalia,  1641, 
ed.  Arber,  Reprints,  1870. 

Nevile,  Alexander,  1544-1614.     See  Seneca  Translated. 

NiccoLS,  Richard,  fl.  1610.     See  Mirror  for  Magistrates. 

North,  Sir  Thomas,  1535  .?-i6oo  .^  The  Dial  of  Princes,  1557; 
Philosophy  of  Doni,  1570,  1601,  ed.  Jacobs,  Earliest  English  Version 
of  the  Fables  of  Bidpai,  1888;  The  Lives  of  the  Noble  Grecians  and 
Romans,  by  Plutarch,  1597,  eight  edd.  to  1676.  Modern  ed.,  Tudor 
Translations,    1895;    also    Shakespeare's   Plutarch,  ed.   Skeat,   1875. 

NoRTHBROOKE,  JoHN,  fl.  1 570.  A  Treatise  wherein  Dicing, 
Dancing  and   Fain  Plays  are  Reproved,  1577,  1579-     Sh.  Soc,  1843. 

Norton,  Thomas,  i 532-1 584.     See  Sackville. 

Nuce,  Thomas,  d.  1617.     See  Seneca  Translated. 

Oldcastle,  Sir  John,  The  first  part  of,  see   Pseudo-Shakespeare. 

OvERBURY,  Sir  Thomas,  1581-1613.  The  Character  of  a  Wife, 
1614;  Characters  with  a  Wife  "now  a  Widow,"  1614,  1615*  l6l6^ 
sixteen  edd.  to  1638,  repr.  Carisbrook  Library,  1891;  Works,  ed. 
Rimbault,  1856. 

Owen,  John,  d.  1622.  Epigrams  in  Latin,  four  edd.,  each 
adding  to  the  last  between  1606  and  1613.  Collected  1624  and  often 
after;  Englished,  1619,  and  six  edd.  to  1678  by  various  hands;  transl. 
French,  German,  and  Spanish. 

Oxford,  Earl  of,  Edward  de  Vere,  i 550-1 604.  Verse  con- 
tributed mostly  to  contemporary  anthologies.  Collected  by  Grosart, 
Fuller  Worthies'  Library,  1872. 

Painter,  William,  fl.  1537.  The  Palace  of  Pleasure,  1566,  1569, 
1575;  "the  second  time,"    1567,   1575.     Ed.   Jacobs,  1890,  3  vols. 

Parker,  Matthew  (Archbishop  of  Canterbury),  1 504-1 575. 
For  Bibhography  see  D.  N.  B.,  xliii. 

Parnassus  Plays,  The.  The  Pilgrimage  to  Parnassus;  l.  Return 
Return  from  Parnassus;  2,  Return  from  Parnassus,  1606.  All  in  ed. 
W.  D.  Macray,  1886,  the  first  two  there  for  the  first  time  printed. 

Parsons,  Robert,  1546-1610.  For  the  thirty-two  items  of  his 
controversial  writings  between  1580  and  1612  see  D.  N.  B.,  xliii. 
P.'s  most  popular  work  was  A  Christian  Directory,  1582,  1585,  and 
other  edd.  Leicester's  Commonwealth,  1584,  1641^,  1661,  was  re- 
pudiated by  him  as  not  his. 

Pastor  Fido,  II,  of   Guarini,  translated,  "by  a  kinsman  of  Sir 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  449 

Edward  Dymocke,"  1602.     See  W.  W.  Greg,  Pastoral  Poetry  and 

Pastoral  Drama,  1906,  p.  242. 

Pastoral,  The.  See  especially  W.  W.  Greg,  Pastoral  Poetry  and 
Pastoral  Drama,  1906;  and  the  collection  of  English  Pastorals,  by 
E.  K.  Chambers,  1895. 

Pedanttus,  see  Wingfield. 

Peele,  George,  1552  ?-I598  ?.  The  Arraignment  of  Paris,  1584; 
Edward  I,  1593,  1599;  Battle  of  Alcazar,  1594,  repr.  Malone  Soc, 
1906;  The  Old  Wives  Tale,  1595,  repr.  by  the  same  1908,  David  and 
Bethsabe,  1 599.  Eight  or  more  pageants  and  pieces  of  occasional 
verse  between  1585  and  1592.  Merry  Conceited  Jests,  1607,  sixedd. 
to  1671.     Collective  ed.  Bullen,  1888,  2  vols. 

Pembroke,  Mary,  Countess  of,  I555?-i62i.  A  Discourse  of 
Life  and  Death,  1592,  1600;  Garnier's  Antonie,  1592,  ed.  Luce, 
Litterar-historische  Forschungen,  iii,  1897. 

Penry,  John,  fl.  1587.     See  Marprelate  Controversy. 

Percy,  Willcam,  d.  1648.  Coelia,  1594;  repr.  Garner,  Sonnets, 
1904,  ii;  Four  plays,  ed.  Lloyd,  for  Roxburghe  Club,  1824,    2  vols. 

Pettie,  George,  i  548-1 589.  Palace  of  Pettie  his  Pleasure, 
1576,  five  edd.  to  1613.     Ed.  Gollancz,  1908. 

Phaer,  Thomas,  d.  1560.  Seven  Books  of  the  Mneid,  1558; 
Nine  Books,  1562;  1573  (completed  by  Twyne  to  twelve  books); 
1583;  six  further  edd.  to  1620. 

Playhouse,  see  Stage. 

Porter,  Henry,  fl.  1600.  The  Two  Angry  Women  of  Ahington, 
1599^,  Dodsley,  vii.     And  see  Gayley,  Representative  Comedies,  1903. 

Preston,  Thomas,  fl.  1560.  Cambises,  1570?,  1585?  Repr. 
Manly,  Specimens,  ii,  1897. 

Proctor,  Thomas.     See  Miscellanies. 

Proteus  and  the  Rock  Adamantine,  Masque  of,  Gesta  Grayorum, 
1688,  repr.  Nichols'  Progresses  of  Elizabeth,  ii. 

Pseudo-Shakespeare.  Locrine,  The  Lamentable  Tragedy  of, 
1595;  Sir  John  Old  castle,  l6oo2;  Cromwell,  The  Chronicle  History  of 
Thomas  Lord,  1602,  1 61 3;  The  London  Prodigal,  1605;  The  Puritan 
or  the  Widow  of  Watling  Street,  1607;  A  Yorkshire  Tragedy,  1608, 
1619;  Pericles,  Prince  of  Tyre,  1609^,  eight  edd.  to  1635;  all  of  these 
plays  were  added  to  Shakespeare's  in  the  third  folio  1664,  and  re- 
printed in  the  fourth,  1685.  See  R.  Sachs,  in  Sh.Jahrbuch,x\\n, 
1892;  and  A.  F.  Hopkinson,  Shakespeare's  Doubtful  Plays,  1890-95; 
also  Shakespeare  Apocrypha,  ed.  C.  F.  Tucker  Brooke,  1908,  who 
reprints  them. 


450  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Pulpit,  The  English.  See  Bibliography  Cambridge  History  of 
Literature,  1910,  vol.  iv. 

Purchase,    Samuel,    1575?-i626.     Purchase    his    Pilgrimage, 

1613,  1 61 4,  1617,  1626.  Purchase  his  Pilgrim,  1619;  Hakluytus 
Posthumus  or  Purchase  his  Pilgrims,  1625,  repr.  Glasgow,  1905,  20 
vols. 

Puritan,  The,  1607.     See  Pseudo-Shakespeare. 

Puritan  Attack  on  the  Stage.  Northbrooke,  yf  Treatise  wherein 
Dancing  and  Vain  Plays  are  Reproved,  1577;  Gosson,  The  School  of 
Abuse,  1579;  Munday  ?,  A  Second  and  Third  Blast  of  Retreat  from 
Plays,  1580;  Lodge,  A  Defence  of  Poetry,  Music  and  Stage  Plays, 
1580  h,  Gosson,  Apology  of  the  School  of  Abuse,  1 58 1;  Gosson,  Plays 
Confuted  in  five  Actions,  1 582;  Field,  J.,  A  Godly  Exhortation,  1 583; 
Stubbes,  Anatomy  of  Abuse,  1583,  five  edd.  to  1593;  Whetstone,  A 
Touchstone  for  the  Time,  1584;  Rankins,  A  Mirror  of  Monsters, 
1587;  Rainolds,  The  Overthrow  of  Stage-plays,  1599;  Heywood, 
Apology  for  Actors,  1612;  Greene,  J.,  A  Refutation  of  the  Apology, 
1615;  Field,  N.,  Remonstrance,  1616;  Anon.,  .^^  Short  Treatise  Against 
Stage  Plays,  1625.  On  the  general  subject  see  E.  N.  S.  Thompson, 
The  Controversy  between  the  Puritans  and  the  Stage,  Tale  Studies,  1 903. 

PuTTENHAM,  George,  1532-1590  ?.  The  Art  of  English  Poesy, 
1589,  repr.  Arber,  1869;  Partheniades,  first  pr.  ed.  Haslevpood, 
Art  of  English  Poesy,  1 81 1. 

Rainolds,  Dr.  John,  I  549-1 607.  De  Romanae  Ecclesiae 
Idolatria,  1596;  Overthrow  of  Stage-Plays,  1599. 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  1552-1618.  A  Report  of  the  Fight  about 
the  Isles  of  Azores,  1951,  repr.  by  Hakluyt,  1595,  and  Arber,  1871; 
Discovery  of  the  Empire  of  Guiana,  1596^,  repr.  by  Hakluyt,  1 598, 
ed.  Schomburgk,  Hakluyt  Society,  1848.     The  History  of  the  World, 

1 61 4,  fourteen  edd.  to  1687,  repr.  Edinburgh,  1820,  6  vols.  Pre- 
rogatives of  Parliament,  ed.  by  Milton,  1658.  Poems  now  first  Col- 
lected, 1813.  Contained  in  Hannah,  Raleigh  and  other  Courtly 
Poets,  1870.     Bibliography  by  Brushfield,  1 908. 

Rankins,  William,  fl.  1587,  d.  1601.  A  Mirror  for  Monsters, 
1587;  The  English  Ape,  1588;  Seven  Satyres,  1598.  No  play  of  R.  is 
extant. 

Reynolds,  John,  fl.  1606.  Dolamys  Primrose,  1606;  Epigram- 
mata,  1611;  The  Triumphs  of  God's  Revenge  Against  Mudrer,  1622- 
24;  and  other  pamphlets. 

Richard  II,  A  Tragedy  of,  first  printed  by  Halliwell-Phillipps, 
1870.     See  Sh,  Jahrbuch,  xxxv. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  451 

Richard    III,    The    True    Tragedy    of,    1 595,      repr.    Sh.    Soc, 

1844. 

RiCHE,  Barnabe,  fl,  1574-1624.  Don  Simomdes,  1581,  1584; 
Riche  his  Farewell  to  the  Military  Profession,  1581,  1 606,  lepr.  Sh, 
Soc,  1846;  Brusanus,  Prince  of  Hungaria,  1592.  Other  pamphlets 
see  HasUtt,  Handbook,  503-506. 

Robinson,  Clement,  see  Miscellanies. 

Rogers,  Thomas,  d.  161 6.  Celestial  Elegies,  1598,  repr.  Rox- 
burghe  Club,  Lamport  Garland,  1887.  Also  the  author  of  many 
re/igious  tracts  between  1576  and  1608. 

Rowlands,  Samuel,  I573?-i628?.  The  Letting  of  Humor's 
Blood  in  the  Head- Fein,  1600,  seven  edd.  to  161 3;  'T  is  Merry  When 
Gossips  Meet,  1602,  seven  edd.  to  1675;  Greene's  Ghost,  1604,  1626; 
Diogenes  Lanthorne,  1 607,  eight  edd.  to  1 659;  Doctor  Merry-man, 
1607,  thirteen  other  edd.  Guy  of  Warwick,  1607,  twelve  other  edd.; 
and  twenty  other  like  pamphlets  of  similar  vogue.  Collected  ed> 
Gosse,  Hunterian  Club,  1 880,  3  vols. 

Rowley,  Samuel,  d.  1633  ?•  When  Tou  See  Me  Tou  Know  Me, 
1605,  four  edd.  to  1632;    The  Noble  Soldier,  1634. 

Rowley,  William,  1585-1642.  J  Search  for  Money,  1609;  repr. 
Percy  Society,  x,  1840;  J  New  Wonder,  1632,  Dodsley,  xii;  ^  Match 
at  Midnight,  1633;  Dodsley,  \ii;  All's  Lost  by  Lust,  1633;  A  Shoe- 
maker a  Gentleman,  1638,  both  repr.  by  Stork,  Publ.  University  of 
Pennsylvania,  1910;  The  Witch  of  Edmonton,  1658;  Mermaid  ed. 
Dekker,  1887;  The  Birth  of  Merlin,  1662,  ed.  Wamke  and  Proe- 
scholdt,  1887. 

Ruggle,  George,  1575-1622.  Ignoramus,  1630^,  1658,  1659, 
1668  and  four  later.  Transl.  by  Codrington,  1662;  by  Ravenscroft, 
1678.     See  Dissertation  by  J.  L.  Van  Gundy,  Jena,  1905. 

Sabbie,  Francis,  fl.  1595.  The  Fisherman's  Tale,  1595,  repr. 
Halliwell-Phillipps,  1867;  Pan's  Pipe,  1595;  repr.  by  Bright  and 
Mustard  in  Modern  Philology,  vii,  1910.     Adam's  Complaint,  1596. 

Sackville,  Thomas  (Earl  Buckhurst),  1 530-1 608.  The  Com- 
plaint of  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  in  The  Mirror  for  Magistrates 
ed.  1563,  and  subsequent  edd.;  Gorboduc  (with  Norton),  1565,  1570, 
1590,  repr.  Manly,  Specimens,  ii,  1 897.  For  other  works  see 
Athenae  Cantabrigienses,  ii. 

Sandys,  George,  1678-1644.  The  Relation  of  a  Journey,  1615, 
six  edd.  to  1673;  Ovid's  Metamorphosis,  transl.  1621-1626,  1628, 
1632,  1640,  1656;  Paraphrase  of  the  Psalms,  1636;  A  Paraphrase 
upon  the  Divine  Poems,  1638;  Solomon,  1641',  1642. 


452  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Satire,  Elizabethan,  see  R.  M.  Alden,  The  Rise  of  Formal  Satire 
in  England,  Publications  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  vii,  1899. 

ScoLOKER,  Antony,  fl.  1604.  Daiphantus,  1604.  Garner, 
Longer  Elizabethan  Poems,  1903. 

Scott,  Reginald,  1538-1599.  The  Hop  Garden,  1574;  The 
Discovery  of  Witchcraft,  1584,  repr.  ed.  Nicholson,  1886. 

Selden,  John,  I584-1654.  Latin  and  English  Writings,  1610; 
Notes  on  Polyolbion,  i6l2,  1613;  Titles  of  Honor,  1614;  History  of 
Tithes,  16 18;  Table  Talk,  1689  and  many  edd.  Works,  ed.  Wilkins, 
1726,  3  vols. 

Seneca,  translated.  Troas,  1559,  Thyestes,  1560,  Hercules 
Furens,  1561,  these  three  by  Jasper  Heywood;  (Edipus,  1563,  by 
Alexander  Nevile;  Medea,  Agamemnon,  both  1566,  Hippolytus,  and 
Hercules  CEtaeus,  158 1,  these  four  by  John  Studley;  Octavia,  [n.d.], 
by  Thomas  Nuce;  Thebias,  by  Thomas  Nuce,  who  collected  the  work 
of  his  predecessors  as  Seneca  his  ten  Tragedies  translated,  1581. 
Repr.  Spenser  Soc.,l'i^l,  2  vols.  See  J.  W.  CunlifFe,  The  Influence 
of  Seneca  on  English  Tragedy,  1893. 

Shakespeare,  William,  1564-1616.  Quartos:  Venus  and 
Adonis,  1593,  eleven  edd.  to  1675;  Lucrece,  1594,  eight  edd.  to  l6li; 
Titus  Andronicus,  1594,  1600,  1611;  Richard  //,  1597,  five  edd,  to 
1634;  Richard  HI,  1597,  eight  edd.  to  1629;  Romeo  and  Juliet,  1597, 
four  edd.  to  1637;  I  Henry  IV,  1598,  eight  edd.  to  1639;  Love's 
Labor  'j  Lost,  1 598,  1631 ;  The  Passionate  Pilgrim,  1599,  (2nd  ed.  lost), 
1612;  The  Merchant  of  Venice,  1600,  four  edd.  to  1652;  Henry  V, 
1600,  1602,  (1619);  Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  1600;  2  Henry  IV, 
1600;  A  Midsummer-Night's  Dream,  1600,  (1619);  The  Merry  Wives 
of  Windsor,  1602,  1619,  1630;  Hamlet,  1603,  1604-05,  1611,  1637; 
King  Lear,  1608,  (1619),  1655;  Troilus  and  Cressida,  1609^;  Pericles, 
1609,  four  issues  to  1619;  Sonnets,  1609,  1640;  Othello,  1622,  1630, 
1655.  Folios:  First  folio  (contains  these  and  the  rest  of  the  plays 
except  Pericles'),  1623;  Second  folio,  repr.  of  the  first,  1632;  Third 
foHo  (contains  all  of  the  foregoing,  Pericles,  and  six  plays  not  Shake- 
speare's), 1664;  Fourth  folio,  a  reprint  of  the  third,  1685.  The  fifteen 
additional  quartos  of  single  plays  issued  after  the  first  folio,  all  of 
them,  except  The  Taming  of  the  Shrew,  1631,  are  reprints  of  former 
quartos. 

The  best  of  many  reproductions  of  the  Sh.  folios  is  that  of  the  first 
by  Lee,  1902;  and  all  four  by  Methuen  &  Co.,  1903-06.  The 
quartos  were  reproduced  under  the  superintendence  of  Furnivall, 
1880-89,  also  by  photography.     The  latest  words  on  the  Bibliography 


BIBLIOGRAPHY  453 

of  the  early  edd.  of  Sh.  are  Lee,  Bthltngraphtcal  History  of  the  First 
Folio,  1905,  and  Pollard,  Shakespeare  Folios  and  Quartos,  IQOQ,  an 
admirable  work. 

Critical  edd.  of  Sh.  began  with  Rowe,  1709;  and  through  the  edd. 
of  Pope,  1723-25;  Theobald,  1733;  Johnson,  1765;  Capell,  1767; 
Malone,  "the  first  Variorum,"  1790  and  many  more  to  Dyce,  1857; 
Halliwell,  1853-65;  the  Cambridge  ed.,  1863-56,  which  established 
practically  our  modem  text,  and  many  more  to  the  monumental 
Variorum  ed.  of  Furness  1873,  16  vols,  to  date  and  still  in  progress. 

In  addition  to  the  Life  of  Sh.  by  Halliwell-Phillipps,  1881,  most 
important  of  a  score  of  recent  biographies  are  those  of  Fleay,  1886, 
Dowden,  1893,  Brandl,  1894,  Brandes,  1896,  Lee,  1898,  Rolfe,  1904; 
Raleigh,  1907,  Furnivall,  1909.  Further  references  to  Sh.  Biblio- 
graphy may  be  found  in  the  present  author's  Elizabethan  Drama, 
1908,  Bihliographical  Essay,  where  previous  bibliographies  are  noted. 

Shelton,  Thomas,  1531-1620.  The  Delightful  History  of  the 
Witty  Knight,  Don  Quixote,  1612,  2nd  part,  1620,  1652,  1675;  ed. 
Kelly,  Tudor  Translations,  1 896,  3  vols. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  i 554-1 586.  Arcadia,  1590,  reproduced  ed. 
Sommer,  1891;  sixteen  edd.  to  1674;  Astrophel  and  Stella,  1591^ 
repr.  An  English  Garner,  1904;  Defense  of  Poesie  {An  Apology  for 
Poetry),  1 595,  1 598  with  Arcadia  and  thereafter  so  printed,  ed.  Cook, 
1890;  Certain  Sonnets,  1598,  ed.  of  Arcadia;  The  Lady  of  May, 
1613  ed.  of  the  same;  Psalms,  first  printed  1823.  Poems,  ed.  Grosart, 
1873,  3  vols.;  Miscellaneous  Works,  ed.  Gray,  1829;  ed.  Fliigel, 
Astrophel  and  Stella,  1889.  Life  by  Greville,  1 652;  Symonds,  Men 
of  Letters,  1 886. 

Smith,  William,  fl.  1596.     See  Sonnet  Sequences. 

Sonnet  Sequences  and  like  Lyrical  Collections.  Puttenham, 
Partheniads,  1 579.  GifFord,  Posie  of  Gilliflozuers,  1 580.  Watson, 
Passionate  Century  of  Love,  1 582.  Soothern,  Pandora,  1584,  Munday, 
Banquet  of  Dainty  Conceits,  1 588.  Sidney,  Astrophel  and  Stella, 
1591.  Constable,  Diana;  Daniel,  Delia,  1592.  Barnes,  Partheno- 
phil;  G.  Fletcher,  Licia;  Lodge,  Phillis;  Watson,  Tears  of  Fancy, 
1593.  Barnfield,  Affectionate  Shepherd;  Drayton,  Idea's  Mirror; 
Percy,  Coelia;  Willohie  his  Avisa;  Zepheria,  1 594.  Barnes,  Century 
of  Spiritual  Sonnets;  Chapman,  A  Coronet  for  his  Mistress  Philosophy; 
E.  C,  Emaricdulph;  J.  C,  Alcilia,  4  edd.,  Davies,  Gulling  Sonnets; 
Spenser,  Amoretti,  1 595.  Griffin,  Fidessa,  Lynche,  Diella;  Smith, 
Chloris,  1596.  Breton,  Arbor  of  Amorous  Devices;  Lok,  Sundry 
Sonnets;  Tofte,  Laura,  1 597.     Tofte,  Alba,  the  Month's  Mind,  1 598; 


454  BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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Southwell,  Robert,  I 562-1 595.  Saint  Peters  Complaint, 
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prose  tracts  between  1593  and  1595,  chief  among  them,  Mary  Mag- 
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INDEX 


Actors,   see  players 

Adams,    Thomas,    315 

Admiral's    players,    the,    81,    96, 

183,  229,  232 
i^schylus,  250,  271 
Alabaster,     William,     alluded    to 

by    Spenser,    52 ;     his    Roxana, 

383 

Alamanni,  318 

Albright,  V.  E.,  87 

AlenQon,  Due  d',   70 

Alengon,  Marguerite  d',  49 

Alexander,  Sir  William,  his 
Aurora,  135;  373;  the  Mon- 
archic Tragedies  of,  240; 
praised  by  Drummond,  374;  his 
completion  of  Sidney's  Arcadia, 
422 

Allen,  Cardinal,  298,   302 

Alleyn,  Edward,  67,  builds  the 
Fortune  theater,  84;  creation  of 
the  title  roles  of  Marlowe,  87; 
Hieronimo  in  The  Spanish 
Tragedy,  a  favorite  role  of,  94; 
96 ;  his  association  with  Hens- 
lowe  and  success  as  an  actor, 
loo,  loi ;  befriends  Dekker, 
173 ;  founds  Dulwich  College, 
182;    183,   232,   424 

Amyot,  Jaques,  Bishop  of  Auxerre, 
translator  of  Plutarch,  273 ; 
Sir  Thomas   North  meets,  278 

Anacreon,  imitated  by  Sidney,  27 ; 
246 

Andrews,  Launcelot,  notable  in 
theological  controversy,  307 ;  his 
eloquence,    315 

Angelo,   Michael,  410 

Anne,  Queen,  of  James  I,  386, 
her  Children  of  the  Revels,  82, 
402 

Anthologies  of  lyrics,  22,  191,  192 

Antiquarian  studies,  books  of, 
Camden's,  292,  293 ;  Selden, 
Speed  and  Cotton,  their  interest 
in,  297 ;  Stow  and  his,  of  Lon- 
don, 297,  298;  Wotton  and,  298 


Anton,  Robert,  his  Vice's  Anat- 
omy, 327 

Apuleius,    translated,    273 

Aquinas,   Thomas,    312 

Arcadianism,  43,   44 

Archer,   W.,  85   note 

Arden  of  Feversham,  89,  90;  most 
notable  of  the  murder  plays, 
184,  185 ;  why  not  by  Shakes- 
peare, 184,   185;   250 

Areopagus,  the,  25,  26;  Spenser 
and  the,  46 

Arg>'le,  Countess  of,  135 

Ariosto,  Spenser  and,  47,  48,  56 ; 
112;    translated,   280,   281;    318 

Aristophanes,   235 

Aristotle,  268 

Armin,  Robert,  his  jests,  104;  his 
satirical   tracts,   329 

Arnold,    Matthew,   44,   277 

Arundel,  Earl  of,  interested  in 
madrigals,   195 

Ascham,  Roger,  4;  on  English 
prose,  8,  9 ;  on  classical  versifi- 
cation in  English,  26;  39,  54, 
299 

Aubrey,  John,  47,  his  opinion  of 
the  Latin  of  Shakespeare,  151 ; 
on  Jonson's   Carlo  BuflFone,  234 

Audeley,  John,  his  Fraternity  of 
Vagabonds,  328 

Augustine,   St.,   290 

Babington   conspiracy,   the,    106 

Bacon,   Anthony,    347 

Bacon,  Francis,  4,  9,  13,  34,  Bre- 
ton dedicates  his  Essays  to,  107 ; 
protests  against  religious  con- 
troversy, 115,  338;  151,  169, 
219,  249,  272,  291,  293,  on  the 
plagiarism  of  Hayward,  294; 
298,  299 ;  on  the  administration 
of  Ireland,  300;  Jonson's  opin- 
ion of,  306;  313;  influence  of 
the  Essays  of,  335;  reasons  for 
the  prominence  of,  337;  his  life, 
337-342;  his  friendship  with 
Essex,    338-340;    rivalry    with 


461 


462 


INDEX 


Coke,  338,  339,  341;  Elizabeth's 
and  Burleigh's  mistrust  of,  339, 
340;  honored  by  King  James, 
340;  conducts  the  trial  of  Essex 
and  of  Raleigh,  340,  341 ;  raised 
to  the  peerage,  and  Lord  Chan- 
cellorship, 340;  his  trial  and 
disgrace,  341,  342;  his  legal 
works,  342 ;  The  Advancement 
of  Learning  of,  342-344;  The 
Great  Instauratio  (or  Restora- 
tion), 343-346;  The  Novum 
Organum  or  new  method,  342, 
343 ;  the  philosophical  system 
of,  343 ;  other  parts  of  the  sys- 
tem of,  344;  his  experimental 
philosophy,  344;  not  the  discov- 
erer of  induction,  344,  345 ;  un- 
fruitfulness  of  the  method  of, 
345 ;  his  distrust  of  scientific 
discoveries  and  limitations  as 
a  philosopher,  346 ;  literary 
works  of,  346-349 ;  the  Essays 
of,  346-348 ;  the  matchless  style 
and  worldly  wisdom  of  the 
Essays  of,  347,  348 ;  Jonson  on 
the  eloquence  of,  348 ;  ceaseless 
revision  of  his  work  by,  349 ; 
his  History  of  Henry  VH  and 
New  Atlantis,  349 ;  variety  of 
the  literary  style  of,  349 ;  his 
mistrust  of  English  and  pref- 
erence for  Latin,  349,  350;  his 
insensibility  to  the  literature  of 
his  age,  350;  his  interest  in 
court  drama,  350;  his  support 
of  masques  and  condescension 
as  to  them,  350,  351;  395;  his 
contempt  for  poetry,  351;  the 
"poems,"  their  mediocrity  and 
pessimism,  351-353;  the  verse 
of,  contrasted  with  the  poetry 
of  Shakespeare,  353,  354;  the 
writer  of  the  Shakespearean 
plays  contrasted  with,  354,  355; 
incredibility  of  the  notion  of  any 
part  in  the  Shakespearean  plays 
by,  355.  35<5;  363,  401.  422 
Bacon,  Nicholas,  Sir,  337 
Bagehot,  Walter,  138,  151 
Baldwin,  William,  chief  author 
of  The  Mirror  for  Magistrates, 
7.  los 
Bale,  John,  his  Ktng  Johan,  63 
Ballade,  employed  by  Wyatt,  21, 
misunderstood  by  Grimald,  21 


Bandello,  a  source  for  Shakes- 
peare, 164,  283;  Painter's  debt 
to,  282 

Bannister,  John,  204 

Barclay,   Alexander,   49,   317 

Barkstead,  William,  his  Mirrha, 
225 

Barnes,  Barnabe,  conitinues  the 
Italian  impulse  of  Sidney,  126; 
his  Parthenope,  126,  127; 
French  sources  of,  130;  131; 
Spiritual  Sonnets  of,  132;  144, 
145 ;  his  Tragedy  of  Pope 
Alexander,  257 

Barnfield,  Richard,  123,  poems  of, 
attributed  to  Shakespeare,  124, 
191,  198 ;  a  writer  of  eclogues, 
223 

Barrey,  Lodowick,  his  comedy  of 
Ram  Alley,  187 

Barrow,  Henry,  antimartinist  exe- 
cuted,  114 

Basse,  William,  pastoral  elegies 
of,  224 

Bastard,  Thomas,  his  Chrestoleros, 
326,327 

Beaumont,  Francis,  179,  182, 
cynical  vein  in  the  lyrics  of, 
207 ;  his  Salmacis  and  Herma- 
phoditus,  217,  218;  not  the 
author  of  Britain's  Ida,  218; 
Bacon  a  "chief  contriver"  in 
the  masque  of,  350,  395;  358, 
389,  393 ;  his  Masque  of  the 
Inner  Temple  and  Gray's  Inn, 
395  J  399;  the  relations  of 
Fletcher  to,  400-404;  life  of, 
401 ;  the  "Plays  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher"  a  misnomer,  401 ; 
not  a  professional  dramatist, 
402 ;  Jonson  and,  402 ;  style  and 
verse  of,  contrasted  with  those 
of,  402-404;  Philaster  and  its 
type,  405,  406;  other  plays  in 
which  Fletcher  had  hand  with, 
406;  411;  his  fVoman  Hater 
and  Knight  of  the  Burning 
Pestle  influenced  by  Jonson, 
415;  romantic  comedies  of,  with 
Fletcher,  416,  417;  The  Maid's 
Revenge,  417;  the  folio  edd.  of, 
and   Fletcher,   424 

Beaumont,  Sir  Francis,  401 

Bedford,  Earl  of,  25 

Bedford,  Lucy  Harington,  Coun- 
tess of,  25 ;  a  patron  of  Drayton» 


INDEX 


463 


212;  complimented  in  verse  by 
Jonson,  24s,  246 ;  a  friend  and 
patron  of  Donne,  363,  371 

Bedingfield,     Thomas,     translator 

*  of  Macchiavelli's  Florentine 
History,  284 

Bellarmine,  Cardinal,  298,  315 

Belleforest,  his  collection  of  tales 
a  source  for  Enplish  translators 
and  playwrights,  282,  283 

Bellenden,  John,  translator  of 
Livy,    273 

Bellum  Grammaticale,  379,  381 

Belvidere  or  the  Garden  of  the 
Muses,  a  book  of  quotations, 
193 

Be-reblock,  John,  on  the  setting  of 
a    college    play,    78 

Bernard,  Edward,  astronomer,  his 
strictures  on  the  philosophical 
system  of  Bacon,   346 

Berners,  John  Bouchier,  Lord, 
translator  of  Guevara,  284 

Beza,  Theodore,  assists  in  the 
Geneva  Version  of  the  Bible, 
289 

Bible,  considered  as  an  English 
classic,  286;  not  characterized 
by  likeness  of  parts,  286,  287; 
its  extraordinary  diction  and 
9t>'le,  287 ;  Tyndale  fixes  the 
literary  stj'le  of  the,  287;  his 
version  complete  called  the 
Matthews,  288 ;  Coverdale  and 
the,  288;  the  Great,  or  Cran- 
mer's,  288 ;  Taverner's,  288 ; 
The  Geneva,  289 ;  The  Bish- 
ops', 289;  the  Roman  Catholic 
version  of  the,  in  English,  289, 
290;  the  Authorized  Version  of 
the,  290;  reasons  for  the  super- 
lative quality  of  the  English, 
290,  291 

Billy,  Jacques  de,  130 

Blackfriars,  the  theater  at,  68,  69, 
78 ;  boy  actors  at,  68,  69 ;  cost 
of,  79;  relations  of  Burbage 
and  Shakespeare  to,  82;  101, 
232,  413 

Blair,  Robert,   133 

Blank-verse,  the  earliest,  21 ;  of 
Pcelc,  76;  97,  loo;  of  Shakes- 
peare, 169-171;  of  Beaumont 
and  Fletcher  distinguished, 
403,  404 

Blennerhasset,  Thomas,  an  editor 


of  The  Mirror  for  Magistrates, 

7 
Boas,  F.  S.,  93 
Boccaccio,   282,   409 
Bodenham,   John,    191 
Bodin,   301 
Bodlcy,    Thomas,    founder   of   the 

Library   at  Oxford,  297 
Boece,  Hector,  11 
Boiardo,    translated,    281 
Boisteau,  282,  283 
Boleyn,  Anne  Queen,  64 
Bower,      Richard,      minor      play- 
wright, 67 
Boy-actors,    67,    68 ;    impressment 

of   under  royal   patent,   68,   69 ; 

78 ;  women's  parts  taken  by.  87 ; 

prominence   of   the,   in   the  war 

of  the  theaters,  2'?2 
Boyle,  Elizabeth,  wife  of  Spenser, 

53.  139 

Bradstreet,    Mistress   Anne,    11 1 

Braithwaite,  Richard,  his  Strap- 
pado of  the  Devil,  327 

Breton,  Nicholas,  49,  pamphlets 
of,  103,  105-107;  his  life,  io6 ; 
pastoral  lyrics  of,  123,  124,  132; 
devotional  sonnets  of,  133;  his  v 
Passionate  Shepherd,  135;  in 
England's  Helicon,  191;  192; 
his  Characters,  335,  422;  con- 
temporary  popularity  of,   423 

Bridges,  John,  Bishop  of  Oxford, 
sometime  Dean  of  Salisbury, 
64,  114 

Bright,  Dr  Timothy,  founder  of 
the  art  of  stenography,  and  his 
Charactery,   299 

Brinsley,  John,  his  educational 
writings,  299 

Brooke.  Arthur,  his  Romeus  and 
Juliet,  3,   282,  283 

Brooke,  Christopher,  friend  and 
collaborator  with  Browne  in 
the  pastoral,  223,  225;  friend 
of  Donne,  358;  committed  to 
prison  for  his  part  in  Donne's 
marriage,  362 

Brooke,  Lord,  See  Greville,  Fulke 

Browne,   Sir  Thomas,   10 

Brewne,  William,  of  Tavistock, 
135;  influenced  by  Spenser,  223; 
life  of,  225 ;  his  Britannia's 
Pastorals  and  other  poetry,  225- 
227;  his  patriotism  and  other 
qualities,    226,    227;    influenced 


464 


INDEX 


by  Sylvester,  285 ;  an  intimate 
of  Donne,  358;  371,  393;  his 
masque  Ulysses  and  the  Sirens, 
396 

Browning,  Robert,  143,  368 

Bruno,  Giordano,  and  Sidney,  19, 
24 

Bryskett,   Lodowick,    51,    57 

Buc,   Sir  George,  225 

Bullen,  A.   H.,   197,   198 

Burbage,    Cuthbert,    81,    82 

Burbage,  James,  68 ;  fits  up  the 
Priory  House  in  Blackfriars  as 
a  playhouse,  79;  builds  the 
Theatre  in  Shoreditch,  83 ;  loi, 
232 

Burbage,  Richard,  67,  69;  leases 
the  theater  in  Blackfriars  to  a 
sharing  company,  82 ;  demol- 
ishes the  Theater  to  build  the 
Globe,  83,  84;  creator  of  the 
chief  roles  of  Shakespeare,  87, 
100;  his  career,  too;  emblazons 
an  impressa  of  Shakespeare's 
designs,  100;  alleged  painter  of 
a  portrait  of  Shakespeare,  100; 
retired  with  a  competence  from 
the  stage,  183  ;  mimicked  on  the 
academic   stage,    381;   424 

Burleleh,  William  Cecil,  Lord, 
35,  reduces  Spenser's  pension 
for  The  Faery  Queen,  52;  a 
patron  of  Lyly,  69 ;  149 ;  his 
Precepts  to  his  Son,  299 ;  his 
mistrust  of  Bacon,  338 

Burns,  Robert,  201 

Burton,  Robert,  299 

Byrd,  William,  a  publisher  of 
song-books,    195,   196 

Caesar,  Julius,  3 ;  translated,  273, 
274 

Calvin,  John,  289,  his  conception 
of  a  Christian  republic,  308, 
309 ;  his  influence  on  English 
Puritanism,   309 

Camden,  William,  loi,  151,  be- 
friends Jonson,  229  ;  249,  278  ; 
his  Britannia,  278,  292;  his  idea 
of  research,  292;  his  Annals  of 
Elizabeth  and  Remains,  293, 
294;  member  of  an  antiquarian 
society,   297 ;    422 

Campion,  Edmund,  the  Jesuit,   11 

Campion,  Thomas,  27,  192; 
author  of  the  words  and  music 
of    his    song    books,    197;    198; 


life  of,  199;  his  Observations  in 
Poesy,  199;  classical  inspiration 
of,  199,  200;  his  secular  and 
relicrious  lyrics,  199,  200;  203; 
masques  of,  392,  393,  395;  411 
Canzone,  the,  27 
Cardenio,    a    lost    play    attributed 

to  Shakespeare,  413 
Carew,     Richard,     translator     of 

Tasso,  281 
Carew,  Thomas,   249,372 
Carey,  Robert,  Earl  of  Monmouth, 

300 
Carlyle,  Thomas,   103 
Carr,    Sir    Robert,    Viscount    Ro- 
chester, Earl  of  Somerset,  friend 
of    Overbury    and    party   to   his 
murder,  333,  334 
Casaubon,    Isaac,    298,    translator 

of  Theophrastus,  331 
Castiglione,        Baldassare,        The 
Courtier    of,    translated,    3,    4; 
his  picture  of  the  cultivated  so- 
ciety of  the  Renaissance,  19,  20, 
24;   Sir  Thomas  Hoby,  transla- 
tor of,  284 
Castro,   de,    author   of   the   source 
of    Love's    Cure,    attributed    to 
Fletcher,   419   note 
Cato,   3 

Catullus,   200,   246 
Cavendish,   William,   his   Life   of 

Wolsey,  6,  292 
Cawarden,    Sir    Thomas,    Master 

of  the  Revels,  78 
Cayet,  285 

Cecil,  Sir  Robert,  refuses  the  use 
of  the  council-chest  for  histori- 
cal   research,    293 ;    his    apathy 
towards   his   cousin   Bacon,   338 
Cellini,  410 

Cervantes,  his  Don  Quixote,  trans- 
lated, 285 ;  a  source  for  English 
plays,  413,  416,  417 
Chamberlain,  the  Lord,  his  play- 
ers, the  company  of  Shakes- 
peare, 80;  at  the  Theater,  the 
Curtain  and  the  Globe,  81 ; 
leadership  of,  183,  184;  Shakes- 
peare prominent  in,  230;  and 
its  rivals  in  the  latter  years  of 
Elizabeth,  232;  act  Every  Man 
In  His  Humor,  234 
Chapel  Royal,  Children  of  the, 
early  plays  of  the,  67,  68;  at 
Blackfriars,  69;  alleged  to  have 


INDEX 


465 


been  under  the  royal  patronage, 
69;  79,  100,  232;  their  prom- 
inence, 235;  their  part  in  the 
war   of   the   theaters,   236,   238, 

239 
Chapman,  George,  his  Coronet  of 
Sonnets,  132,  dedicatory  sonnets 
prefixed  to  his  Homer,  134; 
perhaps  the  other  poet  of 
Shakespeare's  Sonnets,  144; 
^55)  192,  208;  completes  Mar- 
lowe's Hero  and  Leander,  215, 
216;  224;  his  practice  of  the 
comedy  of  humors,  230,  231; 
collaborates  with  Jonson  and 
Marston,  242;  249;  his  tragedy 
on  Caesar  and  Pompey,  254; 
255;  Bussy  D'Ambo'ts  and  other 
tragedies  on  French  histor}', 
256,  257;  his  clumsiness  in 
treatment  of  the  supernatural, 
260;  his  translation  of  Homer, 
273;  life  of,  274,  275;  early 
comedies  of,  275 ;  his  romantic 
comedies,  275 ;  original  poetry 
of,  275;  his  translation  of 
Homer,  275-278 ;  as  a  trans- 
lator, 277,  278;  on  obscurity  in 
poetry,  323 ;  371 ;  a  writer  of 
masques,  393 ;  his  Masque  of 
the  Middle  Temple  and  Lin- 
coln's Inn,  395;  399;  411,  his 
JVhole   JVorks  of  Homer,  423 

"Characters,"  defined,  331 ;  their 
origin  in  Theophrastus,  3'?i; 
forerunners  of,  in  Chaucer  and 
Jonson,  331,  332;  of  Hall,  332, 
of  Overbury,  333-335;  of  Bre- 
ton,   107,   335;   of  others,   336 

Charlemagne,  the  heroical  drama 
of,  178 

Charles  I,  King,  34,  244,  256,  322, 
371.  382,  390,  394.  417 

Charles   H,   King,   9 

Chaucer,  Geoffrej",  9,  20,  21,  29; 
an  inspiration  to  Spenser,  46, 
48;  56;  influence  of  meters  of, 
on  Spenser,  60;  his  Knighfs 
Tale  dramatized,  67,  112;  a 
source  for  The  Midsummer- 
Night's  Dream,  157;  the  Troilus 
story  as  treated  by  Shakespeare 
and,   167;   175,  331,  378 

Chester,  Charles,  supposedly  ridi- 
culed by  Jonson,  234,  235 


Chester,    Robert,   his  Love's   Mar- 
tyr, 192 
Chettle,  Henry,  his  recognition  of 
Shakespeare,   149,   159;   his  col- 
laboration   with    Munday,    161, 
163 ;    his   Hoffman    and    its    in- 
ventive horrors,  259 
Child,   C.    G.,    128   note 
Chrashaw,  Richard,  222 
Chronicle     history     in     prose,     its 
forerunners,  5;  variet>^  of,  5,  6; 
of   Fabyan,    Grafton,    Stow   and 
others,   6;   of  Holinshed,   6,   10- 
13 ;    Elizabethan    conception    of, 
13  ;  as  a  source  for  Shakespeare, 
13,    14;    Foxe's    Book    of   Mar- 
tyrs as  a,  14,  15 
Chronicle  play,  89;  nature  of  the, 
157,      158;      apprenticeship      of 
Shakespeare  in  the,  158;  rivalry 
of  Shakespeare  and  Marlowe  in 
the,    160,    i6i;   Peele,   Heywood 
and   others   in    the,    161 ;    height 
of  the,   162;   obituary  group  of, 
163 ;    legendary  history  in,   163, 
164 
Churchyard,  Thomas,  3 ;  his  con- 
tribution   to     The    Mirror    for 
Magistrates,    7;    23,    52;    pam- 
phlets of,    105,    106;    209 
Cicero,  3,  9,  35,  43 
Cinthio,   155,  his  Hecatommithi  a 
source     for     Shakespeare,     265 ; 
282 
Clarendon,    Edward    Hyde,   Lord, 

422 
Clifton,  Henr\',   68,  69 
Cobham,   Lord,    11 
Coke,    Sir    Edward,    a    rival    and 
enemy  of  Bacon,   338,  339,   341 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  on  Shakespeare's 

narrative  poems,  217;  277 
Colet,   John,   287 

College  drama,  its  character  and 
limitations,  378,  379;  early 
writers  of,  379;  Pedantius  and 
Bellum  Grammaticale,  379; 
the  Parnassus  trilogy',  379-381; 
Lingua  and  Narcissus,  381,  382; 
theatromania  at  Oxford,  382; 
Alabaster's  Roxana  and 

Gwinne's    Nero,    383 ;    Ignora- 
mus, 383,   384 
Collins,   Churton,   151 
Comedians,  see  Players 
Comedy,     first    regular,     64,     65 ; 


466 


INDEX 


early  romantic,  65,  66,  89;  Lyly 
in,  70-73;  Peele  in,  74-76;  pre- 
sentation of  early,  77,  78 ; 
Greene  in,  91,  92;  experimen- 
tal, of  Shakespeare,  154;  early 
romantic,  of  Shakespeare,  155- 
158;  of  Dekker,  173-177;  Hey- 
wood  in,  178,  179,  i8i ;  minor 
writers  of,  182;  Middleton  in, 
of  manners,  186,  187;  lesser,  of 
manners,  187,  i88 ;  Middleton 
in  romantic,  188-190;  Jonson 
and  the,  of  humors,  230,  231 ; 
satirical,  of  Jonson,  232-238, 
242 ;  Jonson's  of  London  life, 
242-244;  last,  of  Jonson,  244, 
245 ;  Roman,  in  imitation  at  the 
universities,  378,  379;  academic 
379-384;  pastoral,  384-391; 
Fletcher  follows  Middleton  in, 
400;  Fletcher  in,  415-417 

Comines,  9 

Companies  of  players,  see  under 
Shakespeare,  Chamberlain's, 

Pembroke's,  King's  players,  etc. 

Conceit,  the  conventional  32,  de- 
veloped under  influence  of 
Petrarch,  127,  128 ;  examples 
of,  in  Sidney,  Drayton  and 
others,  128 ;  in  the  sonnet- 
sequences,  134,  135;  not  an  in- 
vention of  Donne,  368 ;  the 
Donnian,  distinguished  from 
that  of  his  successors,   369-371 

Condell,  Henry,  a  sharer  with 
Shakespeare  in  the  Globe 
theater  and  Blackfriars,  82;  141 

Conqueror   plays,    100 

Constable,  Henry,  a  pastoralist, 
123  ;  his  sonnets  to  Diana,  129 ; 
a  borrower  from  the  French, 
130;  131;  "spiritual  sonnets"  of, 
132,  133;  conceits  in,  134 

Controversy,  the  Nash-Harvey, 
300;  classical  verse  in  English 
poetry,  300;  Puritan,  as  to 
social  abuses,  301 ;  concerning 
witches,  301 ;  religious,  306 ; 
between  Protestantism  and 
Rome,  307,  308 ;  between  the 
Church  of  England  and  Jesuit- 
ism, 307 ;  between  the  Church 
of  England  and  Puritanism, 
307-309 ;  Hooker  and  Travers 
in,  310;  and  see  Marprelate 
controversy 


Cooke,    Anne,    mother    of   Bacon, 

337 

Cooke,  Joshua,  his  Ho<w  a  Man 
May  Choose  a  Good  Wife  from 
a  Bad,   175 

Cooper,  Thomas,  Bishop  of  Win- 
chester,  114 

Correggio,   214 

Coryate,  Thomas,  strange  person- 
ality of,  302,  303 ;  his  Crudities 
and   other  books,    303 

Costume,  in  early  court  plays,  77 ; 
sumptuous  variety  of,  in  Lin- 
gua, 382;  handsome,  of  the 
masques,   391,   393 

Coterie,  literature  of  the,  19,  24- 
34 

Cotton,  Charles,  21,  286 

Cotton,  Sir  Robert  Bruce,  collector 
of  old  manuscripts,   297 

Court,  the,  as  the  center  of  cul- 
ture, 20,  24,  25;  Spenser  at,  51; 
the  drama  at,  63-79;  struggle 
between  the  city  and  the,  as  to 
the  popular  drama,  88 ;  later 
influence  of  the,  on  the  drama, 
378;  plaj's  of  Daniel  at,  386; 
Jonson  and  the  masque  at,  391- 

398 

Courthope,  W.  J.,  37,  219 

Coverdale,  Miles,  his  work  as  a 
translator  of  the  Bible,  288 ; 
becomes  Bishop  of  Exeter,  289 ; 
escapes  overseas,  289;  assists  in 
the  revision  of  the  Geneva 
Version,   289 

Cowley,  Abraham,  mistakes  about 
Donne  and,  364,  365;  the  Donn- 
ian conceit  distinguishable  from 
that  of,   369,   370 

Cox,  F.  A.,   195 

Cranmer,  Thomas,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  his  part  in  the 
making  of  the  English  Bible, 
288,  289;  his  controversial  writ- 
ings, 307 

Crashaw,   Thomas,   370 

Cromwell,  Oliver,  Cavalier  story 
of,  an   actor  in  Lingua,  382 

Cromwell,  Thomas,  Earl  of  Essex, 
encourages  Coverdale  in  the 
making  of  the  English  Bible, 
288 

Cross-Keys,   the   playhouse,   81 

Curtain,  the,  in  Moorsfield,  81, 
83 


INDEX 


467 


Curtius,   Quintus,   3 

Cynicism  in  the  lyrics,  of  Beau- 
mont, 207;   of  Donne,   360 

Daborne,  Robert,  his  pastoral 
play,  The  Poor  Man's  Comfort, 
390 

Daniel,  Samuel,  S ;  a  later  member 
of  the  Areopagus,  26;  his  De- 
fense of  Rime,  27,  52 ;  the  suc- 
cessor of  Lyly  as  the  entertainer 
of  the  court,  79,  loi ;  life  of, 
129;     his    sonnets,    Delia,     129, 

134,  137,  138;  Nash  procures  the 
publication  of  sonnets  of,  142, 
144;  answers  Campion,  199; 
song  in  the  masques  of,  207 ;  of 
the  Sidneian  circle,  209,  210; 
narrative  poetry  of.  210,  211; 
his  Musopliilus,  219,  220;  224; 
ridiculed  by  Jonson,  234,  235, 
248;  Senecan  tragedies  of,  240; 
his  Cleopatra,  240,  255;  286; 
his  History  of  England,  294, 
422 ;  on  obscurity  in  poetrj', 
323  ;  373  ;  his  Queen's  Arcadia, 
386-388 ;  his  Hymen's  Triumph, 
390;  a  rival  of  Jonson  in  the 
masque,  392,  393;  his  Tethys' 
Festival,  395 ;  criticizes  pedan- 
try in  Jonson,  396;  422;  the 
many  edd.  of  his  works,  423 

Dante,  27,  32 

Davenant,   Sir  William,   249,  400 
Davey,   H.,   197 

Davies,  John,  of  Hereford,  his 
sonnets,    IVifs   Pilgrimage,   133, 

135,  226;  his  Scourge  of  Folly, 
327;    refers  to  Philaster,  405 

Davies,  Sir  John,  130;  his  Gulling 

Sonnets,   132;    his   Astrcea,   134; 

192;   Nosce   Teipsum,  218,  219; 

his   Discovery    of    the   State    of 

Ireland,  299,  300;  Epigrams  of, 

326;  popularity  of,  423 
Davison,     Francis,     his     Poetical 

Rhapsody,    192,    195;    373;    his 

masque  of  the  Gesta  Grayorum 

392 
Davison,  William,   192 
Day,   John,   100,    188;    his  Isle  of 

Gitlls,     and     Humor     Out     of 

Breath,  388 
Dedekind,   Friedrich.   117 
Dee,   Dr.  John,  his  Diary,  300 
Defoe,    Daniel,    116,    117 
Dekker,   Thomas,    on    the    use   of 


scenery,  86;  100,  103,  105; 
pamphlets  of,  117,  118;  his 
conycatching  tracts,  117,  329; 
The  Gulls'  Hornbook,  117,  118, 
328;  humanity  of,  118,  163; 
life  of,  172,  173 ;  Old  Fortuna^ 
tus  quoted,  173,  174;  The  Shoe- 
makers' Holiday,  174;  175; 
early  collaboration  of,  175;  do- 
mestic dramas  of,  176,  177;  178; 
value  of  the  work  of,  181 ;  in 
the  employ  of  Henslowe,  182; 
collaboration  with  Middleton, 
187;  realism  of,  190;  lyrics  of, 
201,  203;  233,  Daniel  ridiculed 
by,  in  Patient  Grissel,  234 ;  his 
Satirosnastix  and  part  in  the 
war  of  the  theaters,  236,  237; 
243,  256,  257;  collaboration  with 
Webster,  261;  328,  329;  writes 
pageants  for  the  Lord  Mayor, 
397;    399,  422 

Deloney,  Thomas,  104,  his  prose 
tales,    105,    174,   214 

Demosthenes,   35   note 

De  Serres,  285 

Desportes,   129,    130 

Devereux,  Lady  Penelope,  Sid- 
ney's  Stella,   30,   31 

Diaries  and  like  writings,   300 

Diccon  of  Bedlam,  see  Gammer 
Gurton's  Needle 

Dickenson,  John,  his  Arisbas,  40 

Divinity,  see  Theological  writ- 
ings and  Controversy 

Dolci,   66 

Domestic  Drama,   174-181 

Donne,  Henry,  358 

Donne,  John,  loi,  possible  influ- 
ence of  Greville  on,  125;  his 
Corona  and  Holy  Sonnets,  133; 
192,  202,  207,  225,  249,  272 ; 
a  friend  of  Wotton,  298 ;  Ser- 
mon of,  quoted,  313,  314;  his 
sermons,  314;  the  Satires  of, 
3i9-322,_  324,  359_;  life  of,  357- 
364;  his  education  and  early 
friends,  358;  his  descriptive 
realism,  359,  360;  secular 
lyrical  poetry  of,  360,  361; 
lyrical  cynicism  of,  360,  361; 
his  romantic  lovematch,  361, 
362;  friendship  with  the  Her- 
berts, 362;  Biathanatos  of,  363; 
religious  controversy  and  prepa- 
ration,   363,    364;    his   liberality 


468 


INDEX 


on  opinion,  364;  becomes  Dean 
of  St.  Paul's,  364;  and  Cowley, 
364;  and  the  "metaphysical 
school  of  poetry";  364,  365; 
salient  qualities  of  the  poetry 
of,  365-371;  The  Anatomy  of 
the  World,  367;  his  originality, 
368;  his  use  of  conceit,  368, 
369;  his  use  of  technical 
imagery,  370,  371 ;  a  lost  ed.  of 
the  poetry  of,  371 ;  influence  of, 
371,  372;  Jonson  and,  371,  372; 
Herbert  and,  372,  373 ;  Drum- 
mond's  opinion  of,  374;  375; 
strictly  an  Elizabethan,  376; 
Izaak  Walton  and,  377,  424 

Douglas,   Lady,   53 

Dove,    John,    49 

Dowden,  E,  41 

Dowland,  John,   the   lutenist,   197, 
198 

Drake,   Sir  Francis,   15,  16,  24 

Drama,  before  Elizabeth,  63 ; 
Elizabethan,  its  origin  at  court 
64,  66 ;  classical  influence  on 
the,  65 ;  Italian  influence  on, 
66 ;  before  the  Armada,  66,  67 ; 
amateur  nature  of  earlier,  67; 
of  the  boy  companies,  68,  69 ; 
presentation  of,  at  court,  76- 
78;  popular,  its  origin,  80;  pre- 
Shakespearean  popular,  89,  90; 
main  influences  on  the,  90;  play- 
wrights preceding  Shakespeare, 
90-100;  the  new  romantic,  100; 
popular  vernacular,  148-190; 
Shakespeare  in  the,  148-171 ; 
Dekker  Heywood  and  Middle- 
ton  in  the,  172-190;  domestic, 
174-182;  Henslow's  exploita- 
tion of  the,  182-184;  murder 
plays  in  the,  184,  185 ;  of  Lon- 
don life,  186-188;  of  romantic 
type,  188 ;  the  problem,  188, 
189;  songs  in  the,  201-208;  of 
humors,  230-232 ;  war  of  the 
theaters,  232-237 ;  personal 
rivalry  in  the,  232-240;  Sene- 
can  influence  on  academic, 
240;  Jonson  and  Shakespeare  in 
the,  240-242;  Jonson  in,  230- 
245 ;  heydey  of  the  tragic,  250- 
271 ;  later  Senecan  influence  in, 
250,  251,  earliest  tragedies  of 
Shakespeare,  251-255 ;  Roman 
history    in    the,    252-254;    Cleo- 


patra in,  255;  Chapman  in 
tragic,  255;  of  revenge,  257- 
260;  other  tragic  topics  for, 
260;  Webster  in,  261-264; 
Shakespeare  in  the  height  of 
his  tragic,  264-271 ;  Bacon  and 
the,  350,  351;  at  the  universi- 
ties, 378-384;  early  college 
plays,  378,  379;  royal  patron- 
age of,  at  the  universities,  378, 
379;  nature  and  limitation  of 
the  college,  379;  the  Parnas- 
sus trilogy,  379-381;  Lingua 
and  other  allegorical  college, 
381-383;  tragical,  at  college, 
383,  384;  the  pastoral,  384-392; 
the  masque,  392-398;  character 
of  Elizabethan,  399;  Fletcher 
and  the  heroic,  400 ;  tragicomedy, 
400;  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  in 
the,  400-406 ;  the  Philaster-type 
of,  405,  406 ;  the  "romances"  of 
Shakespeare,  407-414;  Shakes- 
peare and  Fletcher  in  the,  413- 
415;  Fletcher's  comedies  of 
manners,  415,  416,  romantic 
comedies  of  Fletcher,  416; 
Fletcher  in  tragic,  417-419; 
the  new,  of  Fletcher,  420 
Drant,  Thomas,  experimenter  in 
classical  verse  and  translator  of 
Horace,  26,  274;  and  of  Homer, 
274,  275,  317 
Drayton,  Michael,  7,  8 ;  commends 
The  Shepherds'  Calendar,  49 ; 
alluded  to  in  Colin  Clout,  53 ; 
a  pastoralist,  123 ;  his  use  of 
conceit,  128,  134;  his  Idea's 
Mirror,  129,  130,  137,  138;  his 
borrowings  of  the  French 
lyrists,  130;  131,  134;  parallels 
with  Shakespeare,  138;  his  part 
in  the  play  of  Oldcastle,  162; 
his  part  in  The  Merry  Devil  of 
Edmonton,  175 ;  a  writer  for 
Henslow,  182;  alleged  author  of 
the  words  to  Morley's  First 
Book  of  Ballets,  197;  200;  nar- 
rative poems  of,  211,  212;  his 
Ballad  of  Agincourt,  212;  life 
of,  212,  213;  contemporary 
repute  of,  213;  Polyolbion  of, 
220,  221;  eclogues  of,  223,  224; 
Browne  a  disciple  of,  225,  226 ; 
227,  278;   358,  371,  422,  423 


INDEX 


469 


Droeshout,  portrait  of  Shake- 
speare, 100 

Drummond,  William,  loi,  135, 
229 ;  his  Notes  of  Conversations 
ivit/i  Jonson,  248,  300;  359;  his 
Poems,  372;  life  of,  373,  374; 
his  reading,  373,  374;  his  opin- 
ion of  Sidney  and  Donne,  374; 
his  logical  poetry,  374,  375 ; 
later  works  of,  375;  376 

Drury,  Elizabeth,  celebrated  bj' 
Donne,   366,   367 

Drury,  Sir  Robert,   363 

Dryden,   Sir  Erasmus,  47 

Drj'den,  John,  34,  121,  219;  calls 
Jonson's  latest  plays  '"his  do- 
tages," 244;  249;  his  portrait  of 
Cleopatra,  255,  316,  318;  his 
deliverance  as  to  Donne,  Cow- 
ley and  "metaphysics,"  364, 
365;  400;  on  the  "gentlemen" 
of  Fletcher  and  Shakespeare, 
420;  422 

Du  Bartas,  130,  translated  by 
Sylvester,    285 

Du  Bellay,  46,  a  source  for  Spen- 
ser, 285 

Dudley,  Robert,  see  Earl  of 
Leicester 

Dumb  shows,  76,  77 

Dyer,   Sir   Edward,   25 

Dyneley,  Rose,  supposed  to  be 
Spenser's   Rosalind,   47 

Earle,  John,  Characters  of,  336 

Eclogues,   English,  223 

Educational   writings,    299 

Edward  VI,  King,  i,  9,  10,  63, 
64,    78,   288 

Edwards,  Richard,  Master  of  the 
Chapel  Royal,  his  dramas,  29, 
67,  68;  his  jests,  104,  194,  379 

Egerton,  Sir  Thomas,  a  friend 
of  Donne,  359-360,  362 

Einstein,  L.,  273  note 

Elderton,  William,  68 

Elegiacs,   27 

Elizabeth,  Princess,  Queen  of 
Bohemia,  298,  350;  grand 
masques    of    the    marriage    of, 

395.  4" 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  1,  2,  4-6,  8,  10, 
ti;  welcomed  with  poetry  at 
Kenilworth,  22,  23;  39;  orders 
Spenser  a  pension,  52;  54;  The 
Faery  Queen  dedicated  to,  55 ; 
figured    in    the    same,    59;    63; 


Gorboduc  acted  before,  65 ; 
character  of,  as  an  encourager 
of  the  drama,  67;  69;  figured 
in  plays  of  Lyly,  70-73 ;  com- 
plimented in  The  Arraign- 
ment of  Paris,  75,  76 ;  82,  84, 
94,  102,  103,  113;  eulogized  by 
Greville,  125,  304;  145,  157; 
suggests  FalstafI  oit  The 
Merry  If'ives,  162;  164,  168; 
proposes  visiting  Queen  Mary 
in  disguise  of  a  page,  172;  rep- 
resented on  the  stage  in  obit- 
uary plays,  178;  182,  193,  194, 
206,  209,  216,  219,  221 ;  Shake- 
speare and  ether  poets  criti- 
cised for  not  celebrating  the 
death  of,  224,  225 ;  232,  255, 
272,  276;  commands  Harington 
to  translate  Orlando  Furioso, 
280;  the  Bishops'  Bible  the  offi- 
cial Bible  of,  289;  292,  Cam- 
den's Annals  of,  293 ;  Ha}'- 
ward's  Annals  of,  294;  297;  an 
auspicious  day  calculated  for 
the  accession  of,  by  Dr.  Dee, 
300;  309;  317,  337;  mistrusts 
Bacon,  339,  341,  355;  para- 
phrases certain  psalms,  351 ; 
356,  357;  regaled  with  plavs 
at  Cambridge,  378,  379;  383, 
384;  pastoral  interludes  before, 
385;  392,  414.  421,  425 
Ellesmere,  Lord  Chancellor,  359; 
Donne  secretary  to,  360;  his 
opinion  of  Donne,  362 
Ellis,  R.  L.,  343 
Elyot,  Sir  Thomas,  2,  299 
Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  305 
England's  Helicon,  contributors 
to,  123 ;  124;  191,  192 
England's  Parnassus,  192 
Epic,  Elizabethan  poetry,  209-212 
Epigrams,  and  satire,  326;  of  Sir 
John  Davies,  326;  of  Davies  of 
Hereford,  327;  of  Wither, 
Rowlands  and  Harington,  327; 
of   Jonson,    327,    328;    in   prose, 

Erasmus,    Desiderius,    2,    4,    287, 

307 
Eslava,    Antonio    de,    his    Noches 

de   Invierno    alleged   the   source 

of    The    Tempest,   412 
Essays,  of  Breton,  335;  of  Bacon, 

346-350 


470 


INDEX 


Essex,  Frances  Howard,  Countess 
of,  71 ;  celebrated  by  Chapman, 
275 ;  her  flirtation  with  Somer- 
set and  marriage  to  him,  333 ; 
her  murder  of  Overbury,  334 

Essex,  Robert  Devereux,  second 
Earl  of,  15,  54,  106,  141,  allu- 
sion to  the  popularity  of,  in 
Henry  V,  168,  192,  223,  Chap- 
man's Homer  first  dedicated  to 
the,  276.  293 ;  accompanied  by 
Raleigh  in  the  expedition 
against  Cadiz,  295;  320,  his 
friendship  for  Bacon,  338-340; 
Bacon  of  counsel  against,  in 
his  trial  for  treason,  340,  341, 
350;  Donne  a  volunteer  on  the 
Cadiz  expedition  of  the,  359 

Essex,  Robert  Devereux,  third 
Earl   of,   333 

Essex,  Walter  Devereux,  first 
Earl  of,   30 

Est,   Thomas,    196 

Etheridge,  Sir  George,  249 

Euphuism,  of  Lyly,  37-40;  its 
nature,  37-39;  vogue  of,  40; 
imitations  of  Lyly,  40,  41 ;  and 
Arcadianism,  41,  44 

Euripides,   29,    74,   250 

Evans,  Henry,  manager  of  the 
theater  in  Blackfriars,  68 

Fabyan,   Robert,   his   Chronicle,   6 

Fair   Em    the    Miller's    Daughter, 

89 
Fair  Maid  of  the  Exchange,  The, 

a    comedy    attributed    to    Hey- 

wood,  179 
Fairfax,     Edward,     translator    of 

Tasso,   281,   225 
Faithful  wife,  the,  as  a  theme  for 

drama,  175 
Featley,  Daniel,  307,  315 
Fenton,     Sir     Geoffrey,     22,     his 

Tragical    Discourses,    282;    his 

translation       of       Guiccardinl's 

Wars  of  Italy,  284 
Ferrant,  Richard,  68 
Ferrero,  F.  L.,  271 
Feuillerat,   A.,   note,   77 
Field,  John,   theologian,   307 
Field,   Nathaniel,   Jonson's  scholar 

in  the  drama,  231;  his  Woman 

is  a   Weathercock  and  Amends 

for  Ladies,  187 
Fisher,  Thomas,  102 


Fitzgeoffrey,  Charles,  Latin  epi- 
grams of,  327 

Fletcher,  Giles,  the  elder,  his 
Licia,  130;  his  conceits,  134; 
his  frankness  as  to  his  inspira- 
tion,   138,    139;    221 

Fletcher,  Giles,  the  joungcr,  210, 
life  of,  221 ;  his  Christ's  Vic- 
tory, 221,  222 ;  400 

Fletcher,  John,  67,  149,  163,  176, 
181,  182,  188;  as  a  lyrist,  206, 
207,  221,  224;  his  portrait  of 
Cleopatra,  225;  257,  271;  355, 
386;  his  Faithful  Shepherdess, 
388,  389,  399;  life  of,  400,  401; 
his  relations  to  Beaumont  and 
Massinger,  401-404;  a  follower 
of  Middleton  in  comedy,  402 ; 
style  and  verse  of,  contrasted 
with  those  of  Beaumont,  402- 
404;  Philaster  sets  a  new  type, 
405,  406 ;  The  Maid's  Tragedy 
and  other  plays  of  the  Philaster 
type,  406 ;  alleged  influence  of, 
on  Shakespeare,  406,  407 ;  sup- 
posed collaboration  of,  with 
Shakespeare,  413,  414;  his  share 
in  Henry  VHI ;  Shakespeare's 
Shreiv  and  The  Tamer  Tamed 
of,  415;  The  Scornful  Lady  and 
other   comedies   of   manners   by, 

415,  416;  The  Beggar's  Bush, 
and  other  romantic  comedies  of, 

416,  417;  in  tragedy,  ^17  ;Bon- 
duca  of,  quoted,  417-419;  his 
Valentinian,  419;  the  new  dra- 
matic art  of,  420;  decadent 
quality  in,  420;  the  folio  edd. 
of  Beaumont   and,  424 

Fletcher,   Joseph,   221 

Fletcher,  Laurence,  a  member  of 
Shakespeare's    company,    168 

Fletcher,  Phineas,  probably  the 
author  of  Britain's  Ida,  218; 
life  of,  221 ;  his  Purple  Island, 
221,  222;  his  piscatory  drama, 
Sic  elides,  390,  400 

Fletcher,  Richard,  Bishop  of  Lon- 
don, 400 

Florio,  John,  his  translation  of 
Montaigne,   286 

Ford,   Emanuel,   his  Parismus,  40 

Ford,  John,  204,  399 

Forman,  Dr.  Simon,  Diary  of,  300 


INDEX 


471 


Fortescuc,  Thomas,  his  Forest, 
282 

Fortune   playhouse,   the,    183,   232 

Foxe,  John,  his  Book  of  Martyrs, 
6,  14,  15,  18,  422 

Frampton,  John,  284 

Francis  I,  King  of  France,  49 

Francis   II,   King  of   France,   2 

Fraunce,  Abraham,  a  practicer  of 
English  hexameter  verse,  26 ; 
translator  of  Tasso's  Aminta, 
281 

Freitag,     G.,     268 

Fresnayne,   318 

Frobisher,    Martin,    15,    24,    105 

Froissart,     9 

Fuller,    Thomas,    229,    278,    310 

Furness,   Horace   Howard,   37 

Gager,  William,  Latin  college 
plays  of,  378,  379 

Galileo,   346 

Gamelyn,  The   Tale  of,  386 

Gardiner,  Stephen,  Bishop  of 
Winchester,  6 

Gamier,  Robert,  his  Cornelia 
translated  by  Kyd,  93 ;  influ- 
ence of,  on  English  academic 
tragedy,  240;  his  Antoine  trans- 
lated  by   Lady   Pembroke,   285 

Gascoigne,  George,  life  and  liter- 
ary career  of,  22,  23  ;  24,  26,  28 ; 
his  tragedy  Jocasta,  65,  67;  75, 
78,  105 ;  stepfather  to  the  poet, 
Breton,  106 ;  advice  as  to  fram- 
ing a  lyric,  127;  procures  the 
publication  of  a  tract  of  Gil- 
bert, 142;  his  Supposes,  154, 
155,  164;  on  music  for  lyrics, 
193;  213;  his  Ferdinando  Jero- 
nimo,  282;  his  5/^^/  Glass,  319; 
his  use  of  pastoral  figures  at 
Kenilvyorth,    385 

Georgievitz,    295 

Gesta  Grayorum  cf  1594, 
masques  of  Campion  and  Davi- 
son in  the,  392 

Gibbons,   Orlando,   198 

Gifford,    Humphrey,   23 

Gilbert,  Sir  Humphrey,  15,  16, 
24,  105 ;  his  Discourse  of  a  Neiu 
Passage  published  by  Gas- 
coigne, 142;  half-brother  to 
Raleigh,    295 

Giles,  Nathaniel,  Master  of  the 
Chapel  Royal,  his  illegal  use  of 


the  royal  commission  to  kidnap 
children  for   actors,  68 ;   232 

Giraldus,    Cambrensis,    ir 

Globe  Theater,  the,  81,  82;  value 
of  shares  in,  82;  84,  loi,  232, 
413  ;  burnt,  414 

Goethe,     143 

Golding,  Arthur,  his  translation 
of  Ovid,  274 

Gongora,  not  responsible  for  the 
conceit  in  English  poetry,  127; 
369 

Goodere,  Sir  Henry,  a  friend  of 
Drayton,  Donne  and  other 
poets,   212,   363,   364,   371 

Googe,  Barnabe,  3 ;  his  eclogues, 
23.  49,   213 

Gosson,  Stephen,  his  School  of 
Abuse,  28,  no;  his  account  of  a 
play  on  the  subject  of  The 
Merchant  of  Venice,  66,  156; 
253 ;  satirical  pamphlets  of, 
329,   330 

Gough,   Henry,  historian,  295 

Gower,  John,   9,  20,   112,  408 

Grafton,  Richard,  his  chronicle 
histories,   6 

Granada,  Luis  de,  translated  by 
Hopkins,  284 

Gray,   Thomas,   219 

Greene,  Robert,  Euphuistic  novels 
of,  40,  41 ;  a  writer  for 
the  stage,  81;  his  allusion  to 
Shakespeare  and  other  play- 
wrights, in  A  Groatsivorth  of 
IVit,  88,  149,  158,  159;  his  Or- 
lando Furioso,  89,  91 ;  Friar 
Bacon  and  other  dramas  of,  91, 
92;  his  success  in  comedy;  92; 
the  pamphlets  of,  107-110;  love 
stories  of,  107,  108 ;  Pandosto, 
source  of  The  JVinter's  Tale, 
108 ;  autobiographical  pam- 
phlets of,  109,  no;  conycatch- 
ing  tracts,  109,  329;  pathos  of 
the  ungoverned  life  of,  no; 
abused  by  Harvey,  in;  pas- 
toral lyrics  of,  124;  spirit  of 
Troilus  and  Cressida  caught 
from,  167;  172,  173,  178, 
187,  188;  lyrics  of,  in  his  pam- 
phlets, 201;  202,  224,  251,  390, 
410,    411 

Greg,  W.  W.,  8r;  182  note 

Grenville,  Sir  Richard,  17,  18, 
29s 


472 


INDEX 


Gresham,  Sir  Thomas,  178 
Greville,  Fulke,  Lord  Brooke, 
friendship  at  school  with  Sid- 
ney, 24;  a  member  of  the 
Areopagus,  25 ;  appears  with 
Sidney  at  tilt,  31;  on  Sidney's 
character,  33  ;  76,  121 ;  his  lyrics 
Coel'tca,  125,  126;  132;  poetical 
Treatises,  219;  influence  of 
Garnier  on,  240;  his  tragedies, 
Alaham  and  Miistapha,  240; 
his  ideals  of  writing  history, 
293 ;  his  Life  of  Sidney,  304, 
305 ;  his  qualities  as  an  author, 

305,  376  ... 

Griffin,  Bartholomew,  his  Ftdessa, 

131 

Grimald,  Nicholas,  2i 

Grimestone,  Edward,  various  his- 
torical writings  of,  285,  295 

Grim   the   Collier  of   Croydon,  89 

Grindal,  Edmund,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  49 

Grocyn,   William,   287 

Grosart,  A.,  86  note,  105,  112, 
222,  351,  352 

Groto,   Luigi,    383 

Grove,   Mathew,   23 

Guarini,  his  Pastor  Fido  trans- 
lated,  281;    385,   386 

Guevara,  3,  19,  39,  his  Golden 
Booh  translated,  284 

Guiccardini,   284 

Guilpin,  Edward,  his  Skialetheia, 
326 

Gwinne,  Matthew,  his  tragedy  on 
Nero,  253,   384 

Hake,  Edward,  his  Neivs  out  of 
Paul's   Churchyard,   318 

Hakluyt,  Richard,  account  of 
15,  16;  his  Principal  Naviga- 
tions and  other  works,  i6,  17; 
his  successors,  17;  18,  19,  284, 
421 

Hall,    Arthur,    his    translation    of 

the  Iliad,  275,  285 
Hall,    Edward,   his    Chronicle,   6, 

13 
Hall,  Joseph,  234,  the  Contem- 
plations of,  314,  315;  the 
Satires  of,  321-326;  life  of, 
322;  Milton  on  the  "toothless 
satires"  of,  322;  the  meter  of, 
323,  324;  his  obscurity,  323; 
his  problematic  allusions,  324.; 
his  Mundus  Alter  et  Idem,  332; 


his  Characters,  332,  333;  335, 
422 

Hallam,  Henry,  145 

Hannay,  Patrick,  his  poem  Philo- 
mela, 193 

Harbert,  Sir  William,  his  Proph- 
ecy  of  Cadivallader,  214 

Hardyng,   John,    his   Chronicle,   6 

Harington,   Lucy,   25 

Harington,  Sir  John,  59,  76,  his 
translation  of  Orlando  Furioso, 
280,  281 ;  his  Apology  for 
Poetry,  281;   his  Epigrams,  327 

Harman,  Thomas,  his  Caveat  for 
Common     Cursetors,     328,     329, 

331 

Harrison,  William,  his  Descrip- 
tion of  England,  11,  12,  16 

Harvey  Gabriel,  23,  and  the  Are- 
opagus club,  25,  26 ;  the  friend 
of  Spenser,  46-49 ;  attacks 
Greene,  in;  and  Nash,  112, 
113,  116;  126;  his  Four  Letters, 
134;  300,  326;  supposedly  ridi- 
culed  in  Pedantius,   579 

Harvey,  William,  222 ;  his  mis- 
trust of  Bacon's  method,  346 

Hathaway,  Ann,  149 

Hathway,    Richard,    162,    182 

Hatton,    Sir   Christopher,    339 

Hawkins,  Sir  John,  15,  i6 

Hay,   Lord,    363 

Hayward,  John,  3,  6;  education 
of,  293 ;  his  History,  of  Henry 
IV,  and  other  like  work,  293, 
294;  his  attempt  to  improve  the 
writing  of  history,  204;  accused 
by  Bacon  of  plagiarism,  294 

Heisius,   defines   satire,   316 

Heliodorus,  274 

Heming,  John,  81,  a  sharer  with 
Shakespeare  in  the  Globe  thea- 
ter and  Blackfriars,  82;   141 

Henley,  W.  E.,  49,  201 

Henry  VH,  5,  13 

Henry  VHI,  i,  4-6,  10,  20,  39,  63, 
78,  121,  163;  a  poet  and  musi- 
cian,  193;   284,   288,   357 

Henry,  King,  of  Navarre,  134 
Henry,  Prince,  275.   276,   347,   372 
Henryson,  Robert,  49 
Henslowe,    Philip,    100,    loi,    162, 
178;    and    his   Diary,    182-184; 
186,  202,  213,  229,  230,  251,  253, 
261,  424 
Herbert,     George,     a     friend     of 


INDEX 


473 


Donne,  362;  influence  of  Donne 
on,  372,  373 ;  Bacon  dedicates 
his  Psalms,  to,  351 

Herbert,  Edward  Lord,  of  Clier- 
bury,   362 

Herbert,  Lady  Magdalen,  a  per- 
sonal   friend    of   Donne,    362 

Herrick,    Robert,    249,   372 

Hesiod,    translated,    274 

Hexameters    in    English,    26,    27, 

274 
Heyes,  Thomas,   102 
Heywood,   Elizabeth,   357 
He>-Avood,  Jasper,  3,  357,  358 
Heywood,  John,  3,  63,  64,  357 
Heywood,        Thomas,        chronicle 
plays  of,   161,   163 ;    in  domestic 
drama,    176-182;    life    of,    178; 
an    actor    for    I'.nslowe,     178; 
mythological  plays  of,  178,  240; 
his  dramatic  glorification  of  the 
London  'prentice,  179;  A  IVom- 
an   Killed   ivith   Kindness,    179- 
181;      "a     prose     Shakespeare," 
i^i;    other    plays    of,    181;    his 
method    of    writing,    181,    182; 
188,  190;  lyrics  in  the  plays  of, 
207,  208 ;   The  Rape  of  Lucrece, 

Higden,  Ralph,  his  Polychronicon, 

.5 

Higgins,  John,  7 

Hilton,  John,  204 

History,  Elizabethan  interest  in, 
5-9;  chronicles  in  prose,  6,  10- 
15;  in  verse,  6,  7;  Elizabethan 
conception  of,  292 ;  earlier  writ- 
ing of,  annals,  292 ;  Cam- 
den's idea  of  research  in,  292; 
Greville  and  his  ideals  as  to 
the  writing  of,  293  ;  English,  of 
Stow,  Speed  and  Daniel,  294; 
of  various  nations  by  Grime- 
stone,  295 ;  Knolles  and  his,  of 
the  Turks,  295 ;  Raleigh  as  a 
■writer  of,  295,  296;  of  antiqui- 
ties,   297-299 

Hoby,  Sir  Thomas,  translator  of 
The  Courtier  of  Castiglione 

Holinshed,  Ralph,  Chronicles,  6, 
10-14;  17,  i8;  source  of  Arden, 
184;  source  of  King  Lear,  265; 
the  source  of  Macbeth,  266 ; 
Stanihurst,  a  contributor  to, 
274;   292,  409 


Holland,  Philemon,  his  transla- 
tions, 278,  292 

Holyday,  Barten,  Perseus  Eng- 
lished by,  317 

Homer,  translated,  56,  256,  273; 
by  Drant,  275 ;  by  Hall,  275, 
276;  by  Chapman,  275-278;  the 
Iliad  quoted,  276,  277 

Hooker,  John,   12 

Hooker,  Richard,  4,  34;  life  of, 
309-311 ;  his  controversy  with 
Travers,  310;  personality  of, 
310,  311;  his  Ecclesiastical 
Polity,  310-313;  character  of  the 
prose  of,  312;  commonly  over- 
rated, 313;  quoted,  313;  his 
prose  contrasted  with  that  of 
Donne,    313  ;    349 

Hope    theater,    the,    84 

Hopkins,  John,   352 

Hopkins,  Richard,  translator  of 
Granada,  294 

H Orestes,  the  tragedy  of,  71 

Horace,  26,  a  model  for  Jonson, 
246,  248 ;  translated,  273 ;  by 
Drant,  274,  317;  316;  nature  of 
the  satires  of,  317;  imitated  by 
Wyatt,  318;  spirit  of,  in  the 
satires  of  Donne,  320;   322,  328 

Houghton,  William,  100;  his 
comedy  Englishmen  for  my 
Money,    175 ;    182 

Howard,   Henry,   Earl   of   Surrey, 

2,  3.  4 
Howell,  Thomas,  23 
Hughes,  Thomas,  his  play  of  The 

Misfortunes  of  Arthur,  "j-j 
Hume,     Tobias,     the     lyrist     and 

musician,   198 
Humors,  see  Comedv  of  humors 
Hunnis,  William,  plays  of,  68,  194 
Illiteracy  in  Elizabeth's  time,  102, 

103 
Interludes,  of  Heywood,  63 
Ireland,   state   documents   concern- 
ing,    by     Bacon,     Spenser     and 

others,  299,    300 
Jacobean,   press,   the,   103 
Jack     Drum's     Entertainment,     a 

play  in  the  war  of  the  theaters 

attributed    to    Marston,    235 
Jaggard,     Edward,     publisher     of 

The    Passionate    Pilgrim,    144, 

198 
James  I,  King,  of  Scotland,  20 
James  I,  King  of  England,  8,  his 


474 


INDEX 


Art  of  Poesy,  26 ;  82,  90,  106, 
136,  168,  207,  222,  225,  240, 
245,  278,  286;  and  the  Author- 
ized Version  of  the  Bible,  287, 
290,  291;  293,  294,  296-298; 
Basilikon  Doron,  and  other 
writings  of,  301 ;  his  opinions 
on  witchcraft,  education  and 
tobacco,  301,  302,  305,  315,  320, 
329;  and  Overbury,  333,  334; 
his  favors  and  promotions  of 
Bacon,  340,  341,  355;  and 
Donne,  364;  373;  welcomed  to 
Scotland  by  Drummond,  375 ; 
Lingua  acted  before,  382;  Igno- 
ramus acted  before,  383,  384; 
386,  390;  progress  of,  to  London 
characterized       by      pageantry, 

392,  394,  397.  399,  404,  4i7,  421, 

422 
J.  C.'s  A I  cilia,  132 
Jerome,  Saint,  290,  351 
Jessopp,  A.,   357,   361 
Jest-books,   104 
Jew,   the,    in   Elizabethan   drama, 

Jewell,  John,  Bishop  of  Salisbury, 

309 
John,  The  Troublesome  Reign  of, 

89  . 

Johnson,  Richard,  the  musician, 
197,  203 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  10,  244; 
the  "metaphysical  school  of 
poetry"   invented  by,   3S5 

Jones,  Inigo,  his  services  in  scenic 
devices  for  the  masque,  391 ; 
devises  change  of  scenery  for 
Tethys'  Festival,  395  ;   397 

Jones,  Robert,  the  musician,  198, 
203 

Jonson,  Ben,  34,  the  first  poet  lau- 
reate, 52;  applies  the  adjective 
"gentle"  to  Shakespeare,  53;  55, 
79;  on  the  use  of  scenery,  86; 
revises  The  Spanish  Tragedy, 
94;  96,  loi ;  on  Southwell,  126; 
on  the  "requisites"  of  a  poet, 
130;  149;  Shakespeare  an  actor 
in  plays  of,  150;  his  opinion  of 
Shakespeare's  Latin,  151;  155; 
mentioned  in  Hensloive,  182; 
186,  187,  191,  195;  as  a  lyrist, 
206,  207;  224;  earlier  life  of, 
229,  230;  Every  Man  in  his 
Humor,    230;     the     comedy    of 


humors  of,  231;  and  the  war  of 
the  theaters,  232-237;  the  dra- 
matic satires  of,  234-237; 
attacks  of,  on  fellow  play- 
wrights, 234-236;  his  complai- 
sant picture  of  himself,  235; 
Poetaster,  236,  237;  and  Shake- 
speare in  classic  tragedy,  241 ; 
Sejanus  and  Catiline,  241,  242; 
writes  Eastivard  Hoe  with 
Dekker  and  Marston,  242 ;  Vol- 
pone  of,  242,  243  ;  nature  of  the 
comedies  of,  243  ;  English  scene 
preferred  by  243,  244;  The 
Alchemist,  The  Silent  Woman, 
and  Bartholomeiv  Fair,  243, 
244;  the  last  comedies  of,  244, 
245;  the  folio  of  i6i6  of,  245; 
non-dramatic  poetry  of,  245, 
246 ;  classicality  of,  246 ;  lyrical 
and  gnomic  poetry  of,  246-248 ; 
opinions  of,  248 ;  catholicity  of 
the  taste  of,  248,  249;  respon- 
sible for  the  classic  reaction, 
249 ;  revises  The  Spanish  Trag- 
edy, 258;  in  rivalry  with 
Shakespeare  in  the  tragedy  of 
revenge,  258 ;  technique  of, 
268,  272,  274,  275,  278,  291,  292; 
contributes  to  Raleigh's  History, 
296;  visits  Drummond  in  Scot- 
land, 300;  303;  his  Discoveries, 
304-306 ;  his  opinion  of  Bacon 
and  Shakespeare,  306;  316, 
317,  324,  326;  Epigrams  of, 
327,  328 ;  "characters"  in  plays 
ofi  331,  332;  344;  on  the  elo- 
quence of  Bacon,  348;  349,  355, 
358;  and  Donne,  359,  366,  371, 
372;  and  Drummond,  373,  374; 
376,  377;  381;  The  Sad  Shep- 
herd of,  385,  386,  390;  and  the 
masque,  391-395;  his  rivalry 
with  Daniel,  392;  invents  the 
antimasque,  394;  395,  396,  397, 
399;  his  conviviality  and  Bo- 
hemianism,  401 ;  and  Beaumont, 
402;  403,  415;  the  playwright  of 
theory,  420;  the  first  folio  of 
the  works  of,  423,  424;  425 
Josephus,  translated.  273 
Jusserand,  J.  J.,  36,  40,  115 
Juvenal,  translated,  273 ;  nature  of 
the  satires  of,  317;  his  method 
of  direct  rebuke,  317;  323 
Keats,  John,  62,  215 


INDEX 


475 


Kemp,  William  the  comedian,  8i; 

taken   off   in    The  Return   from 

Parnassus,  380 
King    Leir,    a    comedy    attributed 

to  Lodge,  163,  265 
King's    company    of    players,    80; 

recognized     in     Scotland,     i68 ; 

183,  185 
Kingsley,    Charles,    36 
Kinwelmarsh,   Francis,   23 
Kirke,    Edward,    the    "E.    K."   of 

the    gloss    to     The    Shepherds' 

Calendar,  45-48 
Kirkman,    Francis,    publisher    on 

Heywood,  181 
Knolles,    Richard,    his   History   of 

the   Turks,  295 
Kyd,    Thomas,    a    schoolmate    of 

Spenser's,  45;  80;   a  playwright 

for  various  companies,  81;    89; 

life  of,  93  ;   The  Spanish  Trag- 
edy and  other  plays  of,   93-95 ; 

influence     of     Seneca     on,     95; 

author  of  the   lost  Hamlet,   95 ; 

influence    of,    on    tragedy,    100; 

attack  of  Greene  on,   in;    155, 

236,   240,   251;    revival   of   The 

Spanish    Tragedy   of,   257,   258; 

translation     by,     of     Garnier's 

Antoine,  285;   378,   399 
Lalia,  a  college  comedj,   383 
Lamb,  Charles,  181,  189,  208,  220, 

273 
Landor,   Walter   Savage,    376 
Langland,  John,   3 
Languet,  Hubert,  24 
Latimer,   Hugh,  4 
Latin,  an  example  to  English,   8; 

the   only   language  of   learning, 

9  ^   construction    of   Elizabethan 

prose,  9,  10 
Latinism    and    Latinists,    10,    22, 

34,  44,  116 
Learning,   the    New,    in   England, 

2,  3 
Lee,  S.,  30  note 
Legge,  Thomas,  379 
Leicester,  Earl  of,  Robert  Dudley, 

23.  24,  47,  59,  71,  80,  153,  318; 

his  company  of  players,  80,  153 
Leiand,    John,   the    antiquary,    10, 

221 
Lessing,  28 

Liebig,   Justus  von,   346 
Lilly,    William,    the   grammarian, 

381 


Literature,  of  fact,  the,  5-18;  state 
of  English  in  1564,  2,  3;  histor- 
ical, 5-15,  292-299;  of  travel, 
15-18,  302-304;  of  the  coterie 
and  the  court,  19-45,  52-62,  63- 
79;  385-398;  poetical,  29-33, 
45-62,  120-147,  191-208,  357- 
377;  dramatic;  8o-ioi,  148-190, 
250-271,  378-425 ;  of  contro- 
versy, 102-H9;  the  classical 
reaction  in,  229-249;  of  trans- 
lation, 272-291 ;  of  contempo- 
rary comment,  292-315;  satiri- 
cal, 316-336 

Lithgow,  William,  his  travels  and 
sufferings  from  the  Inquisition, 
.303 

Livy,  translated  by  Holland,  278, 
294 

Locrine,  the  tragedy  of,  attributed 
to  Peele,   163 

Lodge,  Thomas,  his  Defense  of 
Poesy,  28 ;  his  Rosalynd,  40, 
41 ;  a  follower  of  Lyly's  Eu- 
phuism, 41 ;  at  school  with 
Spenser,  45;  49,  81;  his  contract 
with  the  drama,  90;  collabora- 
tion with  Greene,  91 ;  alluded  to 
by  Greene,  92;  93  105;  pamph- 
lets of,  no,  in;  pastoral  ele- 
ment in  Rosalynd  of,  122 ;  123  ; 
a  borrower  from  the  French, 
130;  perhaps  the  author  of 
Mucedorus,  155,  385,  386; 
alluded  to  by  Greene,  159; 
possible  author  of  King  Leir, 
163 ;  his  Rosalynd,  the  source 
of  As  You  Like  It,  165; 
in  England's  Helicon,  191; 
his  Glaucus  and  Sylla,  216;  a 
writer  of  pastoral,  223,  224; 
ridiculed  by  Jonson  on  the 
stage,  234,  235;  his  JFounds  of 
Civil  IV ar,  240,  253 ;  a  notori- 
ous borrower  from  the  French 
lyrists  285;  his  Fig  for  Momus, 
321,   322 

Lok,  Henry,  his  devotional  son- 
nets,  132,   133 

London,  Elizabethan,  83,  84; 
shops  and  signs  of,  102 ;  popula- 
tion of,  103 

Longfellow,  H.  W.,  91 

Long,  P.  W.,  72 

Lopez,  Roderigo,  physician  to 
Queen  Elizabeth,  156 


476 


INDEX 


Lorenzo  the  Magnificent,  20 
Love's    Labor's    Won,    a    play    of 
Shakespeare        mentioned        by 
Meres,  164 
Lucan,   translated,   273 
Lucian,   254 
Lucilius,  347 

Lust's  Dominion,  the  tragedy,  100 
Lusty  Juvenilis,  the  morality,  3 
Lydgate,  John,  3,  5,  7,  "2 
Lyly,  John,  4,  24;  life  of,  34..  35. 
69,  70;  Euphues  and  Euphuism, 
35-40;  Euphuistic  imitators  of, 
40,  41 ;  and  the  office  of  the 
revels,  69;  Endimion,  and  other 
comedies  of,  70-73 ;  staging  of 
plays  of,  77,  78  ;  as  a  dramatist, 
79;  influence  of,  79;  80,  89,  90, 
108;  in  the  Marprelate  Contro- 
versy, 114,  115;  121,  142,  148; 
comedies  of,  an  example  to 
Shakespeare,  153,  154.  ^S^; 
epigrammatic  nature  _  of  the 
lyrics  of,  201,  203  ;  lyrics  with- 
in the  comedies  of,  204;  233, 
355.  369,  379.  385,  388,  399;  his 
Six  Court  Comedies,  424 
Lynche,  Thomas,  his  sonnets, 
Diella,    131;    his    conceits,    135, 

145  , 

Lyric,  the,  defined,  120,  I2i;  ot 
art,  121;  origin  of  the,  121; 
in  the  miscellanies,  121 ;  con- 
ventional character  of  the 
Elizabethan,  122;  the  pastoral 
period  of  the,  120-125;  conceit 
in  the,  127,  128 ;  the  sonnet,  128- 
147;  of  Shakespeare,  142-147; 
anthologies  of  the,  191,  192; 
set  to  music,  193-208 ;  songs  of 
the  drama,  201-208;  of  Jonson, 
246-248 ;  of  Donne,  Drummond 
and   others,    357-377 

Macaulay,  T.  B.,  9 

Macchiavelli,    3,   4,    284 

Machin,   Lewis,   225 

Maddan,  D.  H.,  his  Diary  of 
Master   William  Silence,  152 

Madrigal,  the,  27,  defined,  194; 
its  introduction  into  England, 
195,   196;   writers  of,   196-200 

Major,  John,  11 

Malory,  Sir  Thomas,  5 

Manningham,  John,  Diary  of,  300 

Mantuan,   48,  49;    his  eclogues   a 


model  for  English  poets,  224; 
translated  by  Turberville,  280 

Margaret  of  Navarre,  20 

Marino,  not  responsible  for  the 
conceit,   127 

Markham,  Gervais,  translator  of 
the  Satires  of  Ariosto,  281 

Marlowe,  Christopher,  4,  21,  46, 
49,  74,  76,  80,  87,  89-93,  'ifs  of, 
95,  96;  Tamburlaine,  96,  97; 
Faustiis,  97,  quoted,  98 ;  other 
plays,  99,  100;  followers  of,  loo; 
168,  173;  as  a  lyrist,  191,  201;  a 
translator  of  Ovid,  214;  Hero 
and  Leander,  215,  216;  his 
Dido,  240;  250;  influence  of,  in 
Shakespeare  in  tragedy,  251; 
his  Massacre  at  Paris,  255 ;  260; 
and  Chapman,  274;  a  friend  of 
Raleigh's,  296;  355,  397,  399, 
419,  425 

Marot,  Clement,  49,  pastorals  of, 
emploj-ed  by   Spenser,   285 

Marprelate  Controversy,  the,  113- 
115;  Puritan  tracts  in,  114;  de- 
fenders of  the  church,  114,  115; 
plays  in,  233J  300,  309;  Bacon's 
part  in,  fp^ 

Marston,  John,  192,  208 ;  his  Pij^- 
malion's  Image,  217;  life  of, 
233;  the  war  of  the  theaters, 
233-236;  his  Sophonisba  and 
attitude  towards  Jonson,  241, 
253 ;  writes  Eastiuard  Hoe  with 
Jonson  and  Dekker,  242;  re- 
vives the  tragedy  of  revenge  in 
Antonio  and  Mellida,  257,  258; 
ingenious  horrors  of,  259,  260; 
The  Insatiate  Countess  of,  260; 
his  Dutch  Courtezan,  261 ;  270, 
274;  his  Satires,  324-326;  his 
literary  coxcombry,  325;  his 
works  ordered  burned,  326 ;  a 
writer  of  masques,  393 ;  writes 
pageants  for  the  Lord  Mayor, 
397;  brief  dramatic  career  of, 
399;  Dramatic   Works  of,  424 

Martial,  328 

Martin,  Gregory,  his  part  in  the 
Douay  Bible,  290 

Mary  Stuart,  Queen  of  Scots,  i, 
71,    172,   192 

Mary  Tudor,  Queen,  i,  63,  64, 
163,   229,   288 

Masking,  familiar  in  early  times, 
76 


INDEX 


477 


Masque,  the,  Bacon  and,  350,  351; 
defined,  301 ;  not  whollv  of 
foreign  origin,  392 ;  in  Eliza- 
beth's day,  392;  Daniel  earliest 
rival  of  Jonson  in  the  Jacobean, 
392;  Jonson  and  the,  392-394, 
397;  other  writers  of  the,  393; 
sumptuous  setting  of  the,  393- 
395 ;  Jonson  develops  the  anti- 
masque,  a  foil  for  the,  395 ; 
grand  masques  of  the  wedding 
of  the  Princess  Elizabteh,  395 ; 
great  cost  of  the,  395;  allegory 
in  the,  396;  place  of  the,  among 
other  like  entertainments  of  the 
da}',  397;  effect  of  the,  on  the 
popular  stage,  307;  later  degen- 
eration of  the,   398 

Massinger,  Philip,  399,  a  collabo- 
rator and  reviser  of  Fletcher, 
401,  404;  406 

Masuccio  di  Salerno,  282 

Matthew,   Sir  Toby,   350 

Matthew  of  Paris,   6 

Matthew   of   Westminster,   6 

Matthieu,  285 

Melbancke,  Brian,  his  Philotimus, 
40 

Melville,  James,  the  reformer,  his 
Diary,   300 

Melville,  Sir  James,  i-j2;Auto- 
biography  of,  300 

Memoirs  and  like  works,  300 

Meres,  Francis,  his  recognition  of 
Shakespeare,  164;  his  mention 
of  Love's  Labor's  Won,  166; 
his  mention  of  Jonson,   229 

Mermaid  Tavern,  the,  3 58 

"Metaphysical  School  of  poetry," 
the,  365,  366;  origin  of  the 
term  in  Dn-'den,  366;  miscon- 
ception of  it  by  Johnson,   366 

Middleton,  Thomas,  172,  collabo- 
ration with  Dekker  in  domestic 
drama,  176,  177;  178;  life  of, 
t86;  his  comedies  of  London 
Life,  186,  187;  romantic  come- 
dies of,  188 ;  collaboration  of, 
with  Rowlev,  188,  189;  A  Fair 
Quarrel,  189,  190,  257;  Women 
Bem:are  Women  of,  260;  The 
Witch  of,  and  Macbeth,  266 ; 
271;  Microcynicon  not  by,  326; 
writes  Lord  Mayors'  pageants, 
397;  399;  a  model  for  Fletcher 


in  comedy,  400,  402,  415,  416 

Milton,  John,  %  21,  61,  121;  Syl- 
vester an  influence  on,  285;  315; 
on  "toothless  satire,"  322;  375; 
his  indebtedness  to  Fletcher's 
Faithful  Shepherdess,  389;  his 
figure  and  name  of  Comus  sug- 
gested by  Jonson,  393 

Minshull,  Geoffrey,  "characters" 
of,  336 

Mirror  for  Magistrates,  The,  3, 
6-8,   105,  209,  210,  265 

Montaigne,  9 ;  Florio's  translation 
of,  286;  Bacon  derives  the  title 
Essays  from,   347 

Montgomery,  Earl  of,  Philip  Her- 
bert, the  first  folio  of  Shakes- 
peare dedicated  to  the,  and 
Pembroke,  his  brother,   141 

Montemayor,  his  Diana  Enamo- 
rada,  plot  of  Love's  Labor's 
Lost  in,  155;  Sidney's  acquaint- 
ance with,   284;    373 

More,  Anne,  marries  Donne,  362 

More,  Sir  George,  362 

More,  Sir  Thomas,  2,  4,  9,  13; 
play  on,   163 ;   307 

Morley,  Thomas,  the  musician, 
196,  197,  203 

Moryson,  Fynes,  on  Ireland,  299 ; 
his  Itinerary,  302 

Mountjoy,  Christopher,  landlord 
of   Shakespeare,   149 

Mucedorus,  the  comedy  of,  possi- 
bly by  Lodge,  1515,  385 

Mulcaster,  Richard,  Master  of 
the  Merchant  Tailors'  School, 
45 ;  68 ;  his  educational  writ- 
ings, 299. 

Munday,  Anthony,  his  Zelauto, 
40;  as  a  lyrist,  123;  his  part  in 
plays  of  Robin  Hood,  and 
Oldcastle,  161-163 ;  mentioned 
in  Henslowe,  182;  186;  verse  of, 
192;  ridiculed  by  Jonson  and 
others  on  the  stage,  234,  235; 
his  translations  of  romances  of 
chivalry,  284,  285;  writes  Lord 
Mayors'  pageants,  397;  popu- 
larit>'  of  the  translations  of,  422 

Murder  plays,  the,  Arden  of 
Feversham,  184,  185;  The 
Yorkshire  Tragedy  and  minor, 
185 

Musxus,  translated,  273,  by  Mar- 


478 


INDEX 


lowe  in  Hero  and  Leander,  274 

Music  in  Elizabeth's  age,  I20, 
193,  194;  quality  of  theatrical, 
206 

Narcissus,  a  college  interlude,  382 

Nash,  Thomas,  29 ;  not  a  Euphuist, 
41 ;  46  ;  commends  Spenser,  49  ; 
his  part  in  the  drama,  90;  col- 
laboration of,  with  Marlowe, 
96,  99;  pamphlets  of,  103,  105; 
his  controversy  with  Harvey, 
III,  113;  his  part  in  the  Mar- 
prelate  Controversy,  113-115; 
social  and  satirical  tracts,  115; 
Jack  Wilton,  115,  ii6;  other 
tracts,  115,  116;  on  poets,  118, 
119,  126;  procures  a  surrepti- 
tious publication  of  Astrophel 
and  Stella,  129,  and  of  Delia, 
142 ;  allusion  of,  to  Henry  VI, 
158;  lyrics  of,  202,  203;  his  and 
Marlowe's  Dido,  240;  300,  326, 
328 

Naunton,  Sir  Robert,  his  Frag- 
menta  Regalia,   300 

Nevile,  Alexander,  translator  of 
Seneca,    3,    23 

Newman,   Cardinal,  287 

Newington-Butts,  the  theater  at, 
183        •  .  ^ 

Niccols,  Richard,  an  editor  of 
The  Mirror  for  Magistrates,  7 

Nice  Wanton,  The,  3 

Nichols,   Thomas,    284 

Niebelungen  Lied,  the,  278 

Noot,  John  van  der,  Spenser  con- 
tributes to  The  Theater  of 
Voluptuous  Worldlings  of,  46 

North,  Roger  Lord,  278 

North,  Sir  Thomas,  his  Dial  of 
Princes,  29,  273 ;  life  of,  278 ; 
his  translation  of  Plutarch,  278- 
280;  the  source  of  Shakespeare's 
Roman  plays,  252,  279 ;  quoted, 
279;   285,  422 

Norris,   Sir  Thomas,   55 

Norton,  Thomas,  with  Sackville 
the  author  of  Gorboduc,  65 

Novellieri,  Italian,  translated  and 
imitated,  281,  282 

Novum  Organum,  the,  342,  346; 
and  see  Bacon 

Obscurity  as  a  quality  of  poetry, 
323 

Osteler,     William,     an     actor     in 


Shakespeare's  company,  82, 
262 

Ortelius,  Abraham,  292 

Overbury,  Sir  Thomas,  his  defi- 
nition of  the  character,  331; 
life  of,  333;  his  tragic  murder, 
334;  his  Character  of  a  Wife, 
and  other  characters,  ^334-336 

Ovid,  translated,  by  Sandys,  iii, 
303;  by  Marlowe,  214,  274;  by 
Golding,  274;  by  Chapman, 
274.  275;   381 

Owen,    John,    Latin    epigrams   of, 

327 

Oxford,  theatromania  at,  382,  383 

Oxford,  Earl  of,  23,  69;  his  play- 
ers, 81 

Painter,  William,  22,  his  Palace 
of  Pleasure,  155,  source  of  The 
Duchess  of  Malft,  262;  281-282; 
a   source  for    Timon,  407 

Palestrina,  uprise  of  Italian  music 
with,   193 

Palmer,   G.   H.,   372   note 

Pamphlet,  the,  forerunner  of  the 
newspaper,  103 ;  defined,  103, 
104;    diversity   of,    104 

Paradise  of  Dainty^  Devices,  The, 
121 

Parker,  Matthew,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  6 ;  his  part  in  the 
making  of  the  Bible,  289;  his 
interest  in   antiquities,  297;    352 

Parnassus  trilogy,  the.  The  Pil- 
grimage to  Parnassus,  379;  the 
two  parts  of  The  Return  from 
Parnassus,  380;  Shakespeare 
quoted  and  appraised  in  the, 
380,  381 ;  Burbage  and  Kemp 
taken    off    in    the,    381 

Parrot,  Henry,  "characters"  of, 
336 

Parsons,  Robert,  125 ;  his  Chris- 
tian Directory  and  other  writ- 
ings, 307 

Passionate  Pilgrim,   The,  191 

Pastoral  drama,  384;  its  origin  in 
Italy,  385;  elements  of,  in  Gas- 
coigne,  Sidney,  Lyly  and  Peele, 
285 ;  The  Sad  Shepherd  and  As 
You  Like  It,  385,  386;  of  regu- 
lar type,  386;  Daniel's  Queen's 
Arcadia,  386-388;  Fletcher's 
Faithful  Shepherdess,  388-390; 
other  specimens  of,   390,  391 

Pastoral   narrative  verse,  220-228, 


INDEX 


479 


inspired  by  Spenser,  221 ;  the 
Fletchers  in,  221-223 !  other 
writers  of,  223-225 ;  Browne 
and  his  group  of  writers  of, 
225-228 

Paul's  boys,  78,  their  playhouse, 
84;   their  prominence,  232 

Peele,  George,  his  life,  73,  74;  his 
dramas,  73-76;  his  Arraignment 
of  Paris,  74;  quoted  75,  76;  89; 
imaginative  quality  of,  90, 
91;  Mrrey  Jests  of,  104;  121; 
pastoral  lyrics  of,  123 ;  alluded 
to  by  Greene,  159;  transfers 
Senecan  tragedy  in  Locrine  to 
the  popular  stage,  163 ;  in 
England's  Helicon,  191 ;  lyrics 
in  the  dramas  of,  201,  203 ;  223, 

251,  378,   379,   397 
Pembroke,  Mary  Sidney,  Countess 
of,    20 ;    the   Arcadia   dedicated 
to,   24;    patronizes   Breton,    106; 
translator  of  Garnier's  Antoine, 

285 

Pembroke,  William  Herbert,  Earl 
of,  24;  his  company  of  players, 
81 ;  a  probable  patron  of 
Shakespeare,  141 ;  by  some 
identified  with  the  "W.  H."  of 
the  dedication  of  Shakespeare's 
Sonnets,  142,  144 

Penniraan,   J.    H.,   234 

Penry,  John,  antimartinist  execu- 
ted, 114 

Percy,  William,  minor  sonneteer 
and  plai.'wright,  126,  131 

Persius,  Satires  of,  Englished  by 
Holyday,  317;  his  method  of 
direct    rebuke,    317;    322 

Petrarch,  the  sonnets  of,  imitated 
by  Wyatt,  20;  by  Sidney,  30- 
32;  46;  the  conceit  in  English 
developed  under  the  influence 
of,  127;  universal  imitation  of, 
130,  131,  134;  Spenser  influ- 
enced by,  140;  368;  Drummond 
influenced  by,   374,   375 

Pettie,  George,  his  Palace  of 
Pleasure,  39,  40,  282 

Pico,   della    Mirandola,  20 

Pindar,  248 

Phaer,  Thomas,  his  translation  of 
the  ^^neid,  3,  m 

Philaster  group,  the,  of  plays,  405, 
406 

Philip  II,  King,   i,   19,  70 


Philips,   Augustine,   81 

Phoenix"  Nest,  The,  191 

Plato,  38,  331,  378 

Plautus,  a  model  for  early  comedy, 
64,  65;  influence  of,  90,  201, 
on  Shakespeare,  154,  155;  on 
Jonson,    231;    translated,   273 

Play,  acting  of  an  Elizabethan,  at 
court,  76-78 ;  at  the  universir>-, 
78 ;  in  the  cit}-,  87 ;  cost  of  a 
new,   183 

Players,  classes  of  Elizabethan, 
67;  choirboys  as,  68,  69;  stroll- 
ing, and  mountebanks,  80 ;  early 
companies  of  professional,  80, 
81;  boy,  for  women's  parts,  87; 
importance  and  success  of,  87- 
89;  attacks  upon,  88;  extem- 
poral  wit  of,  89;  success  of, 
100,  lor,  183;  and  see  under 
Alleyn  and  Burbage 

Playhouse,  construction  of  the 
Elizabethan,  82-85;  the  inn- 
yard,  the  original  of  the,  82, 
83;  stage  of  the,  85:  balcony  of 
the,  85;  behavior  of  gallants  at 
the,  87 

Playwrights,  varieties  of,  64; 
choirmasters  as,  67,  68 ;  popular 
professional  and  actor,  89 ;  pre- 
Shakespearean  group  of,  90-101 

Pleiade,  the,  24,  30 

Pliny,  translated  by  Holland,  278 

Plutarch,  a  source  of  The  Mid- 
summer-Sight's Dream,  157; 
Shakespeare's  general  source  for 
Roman  history,  254;  273;  trans- 
lated by  Holland,  278 ;  by 
North,    280 

Poel,  W.,  156  note 

Poetomachia,  see  War  of  the 
Theaters 

Poliziano,   20 

Pontoux,    Claude    de,    130 

Pope,  Alexander,   249 

Pope,  Thomas,  a  fellow  actor  of 
Shakespeare,    81 

Porter,  Henry,  his  comedy  Tii'o 
Angry     JVomen     of     Abington, 

175 

Portes,    Phillipe   des,    285 

Porta,  Giovanni,  della,  383 

Porto,  Luigi  da,  282 

Poseidippus,  an  epigram  of,  para- 
phrased by  Bacon,  352 

Poulter's  measure,   21 


48o 


INDEX 


Prayer  Book,  the  English,  306 

Preston,  Thomas,  29,  46,  his 
Cambyses,  68 ;  379 

Priscian,    381 

Problem  play,  the  Elizabethan, 
189 

Properties  on  the  Elizabethan 
stage,  85-87 

Prose,  English,  early  disrepute  of, 
8,  9 ;  Ascham  on,  8,  9 ;  fit  for 
history,  8,  9;  historical,  8-15, 
292-296;  of  travel,  15-18,  302- 
304;  in  the  leading-strings  of 
Latin,  9  10;  the  new  cultivated, 
34-44;  Euphuism,  37-40;  Arca- 
dianism,  43 ;  the  pamphlet  and, 
of  controversy,  8o-ioi,  300-302, 
306-315;  translation  in,  278- 
280,  281-284,  286-291;  miscel- 
laneous, 296-302;  satirical,  328- 
336;  Bacon  and  the,  essay, 
346-350 

Prynne,  William,   330 

Psalms,      universally      translated, 

351.   352 
Pulci,  20 

Pulpiters,  minor,  315 
Purcell,  Henry,  204 
Purchase,    Samuel,   continuator  of 

Hakluyt,  17,   303 
Puritan  idea,  the,  308,  309 
Pythagoras,    37 
Puttenham,    George,    his    Art    of 

English  Poesy,  27,  29 ;   his  Par- 

theniads    in    praise    of     Queen 

Elizabeth,  134 
Quarles,   Francis,   286 
Queen   Hester,  the   play   of,   71 
Queen's  players,  the,   81,   88,   153, 

Queen's  Revels,  Children  of  the,  82 

Quintilian,   35   note,  248 

Rabelais,    9 

Rainolds,  John,  307,  his  contro- 
versial writings,  308 ;  his  Over- 
throiu  of  Stage  Plays,  326,  329 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  his  report  of 
The  Last  Fight  of  the  Revenge, 
17,  i8;  with  Spenser  in  Ireland, 
51 ;  mentioned  in  Colin  Clout, 
52 ;  Spenser's  letter  to,  as  to 
The  Faery  Queen,  56;  a  per- 
sonal friend  of  Marlowe,  96 ; 
lyrical  poetry  of,  136,  137;  234; 
149,  234;  life  of,  295,  296;  his 
History  of  the  fVorld,  295 ;  his 


expeditions,   296;    varied    inter- 
ests,  296 ;    his   poetry,   296 ;    as- 
sisted    by     Jonson     and     other 
scholars    in    his    History,    296 ; 
Bacon  conducts  the  trial  of,  for 
high  treason,  340,  341 ;  349,  421, 
422 
Raleigh,  W.,   152 
Randolph,   Thomas,    382,    386 
Rankins,  William,  his  satires,  326, 

329 
Regnier,    318 
Renaissance,      in      England      and 

Italy,  3,  4;  conception  of  a  gen- 
tleman, 19,  20 
Respublica,   the   morality,    63 
Return      from      Parnassus,      The, 

allusion   in,   to   the   war  of  the 

theaters,   238 
Reynolds,  John,  135 
Rich,    Lady,    see    Lady    Penelope 

Devereux 
Rich,  Lord,  30 
Richard    II,    an    anonymous    play 

on,  see  Thomas  of  JVoodstock 
Richard  III,   King,   13 
Riche,     Barnabe,     his    Don    Sim- 

onides,  40 ;    his  Fareivell  to  the 

Military  Profession,  282 
Rochester,  Viscount,  see  Carr,  Sir 

Robert 
Roe,   Sir  John,   328 
Rogers,     John,     revision     of     the 

Bible,  288,  289 
Rogers,    Thomas,    obituary    poems 

of,  133,  134 

"Romances"  the,  of  Shakespeare, 
407-413;  their  epic  quality  and 
contrast  with  the  Philaster  type, 
407 

Ronsard,  30,  31,  130,  285 

Rose  theater,  the,  8i,  84,  183 

Rossiter,   Philip,   198 

Rowlands,  Samuel,  103 ;  pamph- 
lets of,  107,  327,  329 

Rowley,  Samuel,  his  play  on 
Henry  VIII,   163,  414 

Rowley,  William,  his  Shoemaker 
a  Gentleman,  105;  188  writes 
Fortunes  by  Land  and  Sea  with 
Heywood,  181;  his  collabora- 
tion with  Middleton  in  The 
Changeling  and  other  plays, 
186,  188-190;  an  actor,  i88;  A 
Fair  Quarrel  of  Middleton  and, 
189,  190;  257,  408 


INDEX 


481 


Ruggle,  George,  his  Ignoramus, 
acted  before   King   James,    383, 

384 

Ruskin,  John,  270 

Rutland,  Earl  of,  Francis  Man- 
ners, sixth,  a  patron  of  Shake- 
speare, loi,  141 

Sabbie,  Francis,  his  Pan's  Pipe, 
223,  224 

Sackville,  Thomas,  a  contributor 
to  The  Mirror  for  Magistrates, 
7;  perhaps  alluded  to  in  Colin 
Clout,  53;  one  of  the  authors  of 
Gorboduc,  65,  67,  240 

Sallust,  3 

Sampson,  M.  W.,  262  note 

Sand}?,  George,  translator  of 
Ovid,  paraphraser  of  the  Bible 
and  traveller,  iii,  249,  303, 
304;  his  travels  and  credulity, 
304 

Sannazaro,    390 

Sapphics,  27 

Satire,  in  the  drama,  233-238;  de- 
fined, 316,  31S;  irregular  and 
formal,  316;  origin  of  formal, 
in  Elizabeth's  time,  317;  earlier, 
317;  Roman  writers  of,  317; 
influence  of  French,  318;  of 
Wyatt  and  Surrey,  318;  of 
Hake  and  Gascoigne,  318,  319; 
of  Donne,  319,  320;  of  Lodge, 
321,  322;  of  Hall,  322-324;  of 
Marston,  324,  325 ;  summary  of 
Elizabethan,  325,  326;  minor 
irregular,  326;  order  to  sup- 
press, 326;  and  Epigram,  326; 
in   prose,    328-331 

Scenery  on  the  Elizabethan  stage, 
85-87 

Schick,  J.,   93 

Scoggin,   Henry,   104 

Scoioker,    Anthony,    135 

Scott,  Miss  M.  A.,  273   note 

Scott,  Reginald,  his  Discovery  of 
Witchcraft,  301,   302 

Scott,   Sir  Walter,   37,  412 

Selden,  John,  contributes  notes  to 
Drayton's  Polyolbion,  221;  249 
his  History  of  Tithes  and  other 
works,  297,  298 

Seneca,  3,  23,  a  model  for  early 
tragedy,  65,  74;  90,  95,  too;  in- 
fluence of,  on  academic  tragedj*', 
240;  on  the  popular  stage,  240, 


250,  25X;  translated,  273,  274; 
his  epistles  described  as  "essays" 
by  Bacon,  347;  358 
Sestina,  the,  27 
Seve,  Maurice,  129 
Shakespeare,  Edmund,  150 
Shakespeare,  Hamnet,  150 
Shakespeare,  John,  102,  150 
Shakespeare,  Judith,  102 
Shakespeare,  Susanna,  i<;o 
Shakespeare,  William,  literature 
at  the  birth  of,  1-4;  Holinshed 
a  source  for,  10,  13,  14:  16,  21, 
28,  34,  40;  his  use  of  language, 
48;  51;  did  Spenser  know,  53; 
55 ;  not  the  originator  of  Eliza- 
bethan drama,  66;  a  profes- 
sional actor,  67 ;  satirizes  Cam- 
byses,  68  ;  69,  76,  79 ;  the  com- 
pany of,  80,  81;  interests  of,  in 
the  Globe  and  Blackfriars,  81, 
82 ;  84-88 ;  the  inventor  of  no 
new  kind  of  drama,  89;  90-92, 
94.  96,  99,  100;  designs  an  im- 
pressa,  loi ;  103,  104,  108,  no, 
117;  lyrics  of,  incidental,  123; 
a  poem  of  Barnfield  attributed 
to,  124;  129,  131;  not  a  concet- 
tist,  134;  137;  Drayton  and, 
138;  patrons  of,  141;  imitative 
in  earlier  work,  141,  142;  the 
Sonnets  of,  142-147,  (and  see 
Sonnets)  ;  biographical  material 
concerning,  148,  149 ;  facts  of 
the  life  of,  149,  150;  education 
and  learning  of,  150,  151;  avo- 
cations of,  151,  152;  and  nature, 
152;  in  London,  153;  tutors  of, 
in  the  drama,  153;  chronology 
of  the  works  of,  153,  154;  influ- 
ence of  Lyly  on,  154;  experi- 
mental comedies,  154,  155;  The 
Tzc'o  Gentlemen  of  Verona, 
15s,  156;  The  Merchant  of 
Venice,  156;  A  Midsummer- 
Night's  Dream,  1ST,  apprentice- 
ship  of,    in    the    chronicle    play, 

157.  158;  the  Henry  VI  trilogy, 

158,  159;  Greene's  allusion  to, 
159;  King  John,  and  Richard 
HI,  159,  160;  Richard  II,  160, 
161 ;  \Iarlowe  and,  i6i ;  height 
of,  in  chronicle  history  in  Henry 
IV  and  Henry  V,  161,  162; 
Falstaff  the  most  popular  char- 
acter of,  162;  Henry  FIJI,  162; 


482 


INDEX 


Meres'  allusion  to,  164;  height 
of,  in  comedy,  164-167;  Much 
Ado,  164;  As  You  Like  It,  165; 
Twelfth  Night,  All's  Well,  and 
Measure  for  Measure,  165-167; 
the  problem  of  Troilus,  167; 
Essex  and,  168;  the  company  of, 
in  Scotland,  168;  development 
of  the  genius  of,  168-171 ; 
changes  in  the  blank-verse  of, 
169;  growth  in  the  style  and 
diction  of,  171;  175,  178,  182; 
thrift  in  the  management  of  the 
company  of,  183;  Arden  as- 
cribed to,  184,  185;  189;  son- 
nets of,  in  The  Passionate  Pil- 
grim, 191,  196;  197;  songs  of, 
203,  204;  metrical  felicity  of, 
205 ;  folk-poetry  in  the  songs 
of,  206;  210,  213;  narrative 
poems  of,  216,  217,  222,  223; 
arraigned  for  not  celebrating 
the  death  of  Elizabeth,  224, 
225;  229;  acts  in  Every  Man 
in  His  Humor,  230;  231,  232; 
the  War  of  the  Theaters  and, 
238-240;  and  Jonson  in  tragedy 
on  Roman  histor}%  241,  242; 
and  Jonson  contrasted,  243  ;  244, 
250;  influences  of  Kyd  and 
Marlowe  on,  in  tragedy,  251, 
252;  Titus  Andronicus,  251, 
252;  Romeo  and  Juliet,  252; 
Julius  Casar,  252,  253  ;  a  leader 
in  Roman  tragedies,  253 ; 
Antony  and  Cleopatra,  Corio- 
lanus,  Timon  and  Pericles,  254, 
255;  his  treatment  of  mobs, 
254;  the  Cleopatra  of,  and  of 
others,  255;  256;  rewrites  Kyd's 
Hamlet  to  rival  Jonson's  addi- 
tions to  The  Spanish  Tragedy, 
258;  Hamlet  of,  258,  259; 
transcendence  of  the  ghosts  of, 
260;  Othello,  264,  265;  lago 
and  other  villains,  265 ;  King 
Lear,  265,  266;  Macbeth,  266; 
the  prodigy  of  the  tragic  art  of, 
266,  267;  development  in  the 
technique  of  the  art  of,  267- 
269;  tempo  in  the  tragedies  of, 
268,  269 ;  changing  points  of  the 
view  of  life  by,  269 ;  morals 
and  manners  in,  270;  ethical 
certainty  of  touch  of,  270;  atti- 
tude   of,    towards    women,    270, 


271;  272,  273,  275,  278;  his  use 
of  North's  Plutarch  as  a  source, 
279,  280;  281;  fidelity  of,  in  the 
use  of  material,  282-284;  286, 
291;  293;  and  shorthand,  299; 
300,  303,  305,  313,  315,  317; 
Marston  parodies,  325 ;  327, 
337;  the  verse  of  Bacon  con- 
trasted with  the  poetry  of, 
353)  354>  2nd  Shakespeare  con- 
trasted, 354-356;  358,  360,  371, 
374.  376,  378;  academic  esti- 
mate oiF,  380;  381,  382,  386,  399, 
401 ;  alleged  influence  of 
Fletcher  on,  406,  407 ;  the  dra- 
matic romances  of,  407 ;  charac- 
teristics of  these  plays  of,  407 ; 
Pericles,  407-409 ;  Cymbeline, 
410;  the  late  art  of,  not  deca- 
dent, 410;  The  JVinter's  Tale, 
410,  411;  The  Tempest,  4x1, 
413;  alleged  Spanish  source  of 
the  last,  412;  late  retirement  of, 
from  London,  413;  collabora- 
tion of  Fletcher  with,  413,  414; 
The  T1V0  Noble  Kinsmen  and 
Henry  VHI,  414;  415,  417,  420; 
literature  at  the  death  of,  421- 
425 ;  contemporary'  popularit>'- 
of  the  works  of,  424;  thorough 
appreciation  of,  by  his  own 
time,  425 

Shaw,  Bernard,  259,  271 

Sheffield,  Countess  of,  71 

Shelley,   Percy  Bysshe,  41,   62 

Shelton,  Thomas,  his  translation 
of  Don  Quixote,  285 

Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley,  231 

Shirley,  James,  his  Narcissus, 
218  ;  his  revision  of  Chapman's 
Chabot,  256;   397,  399,  425 

Shrew,  the,  as  a  theme  for  com- 
edy,  175,    176 

Sibbes,  Richard,   315 

Sidney,  Sir  Henry,  23 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  4,  5 ;  books 
dedicated  to,  19;  life  of,  23,  24; 
his  personal  character  and  ap- 
preciation by  his  contempo- 
raries, 24;  his  writings  the  lit- 
erature of  a  coterie,  24,  25 ;  and 
the  Areopagus,  25,  26;  his  ex- 
periments in  Italian  and  classi- 
cal versification,  27;  his  De- 
fense of  Poesy,  28,  29 ;  his  dis- 
content   with    the    literature    of 


INDEX 


483 


his  age,  29;  his  criticism  of 
contemporan'  drama,  29;  of 
alliteration,  29;  his  lofty  ideals, 
29;  the  poetry  of,  29-33; 
Astrophel  and  Stella,  29-32 ; 
biographical  import  of,  30,  31; 
Petrarchan  inspiration  in,  30; 
French  influences  on,  31;  poe- 
try of  the  Arcadia,  32 ;  popu- 
larization of  the  conceit  by,  32, 
33;  services  of,  to  literature, 
33;  the  Arcadia  of,  42-44; 
prose  style  of,  43,  44;  The 
Shepherds'  Calendar  dedicated 
to,  45;  and  Spenser,  47-49;  51; 
alluded  to  in  Colin  Clout,  52, 
53;  62,  76,  loi,  121,  123,  125, 
126,  127,  his  use  of  conceit,  128, 
129,  131,  134,  137;  genuine  na- 
ture of,  141,  149,  155,  169,  191, 
194,  219;  empirical  classicism 
of,  246 ;  source  of  the  underplot 
of  King  Lear  in  the  Arcadia, 
265;  281;  his  Interest  in  Span- 
ish, 284;  299,  301;  Greville's 
Life  of,  304;  349,  351,  368,  369; 
an  example  to  Drummond,  374, 
375;  376;  his  Lady  of  May, 
385;   388,  422 

Simier,    M.    de,    71 

Skelton,  John,  46,   104,   317 

Smith,    Captain  John,  421 

Smith,    Henry,    "pulpiter,"    315 

Smith,    William,   sonneteer,    131 

Socrates,    37 

Somerset,  Earl  of,  see  Carr,  Sir 
Robert 

Song-books,  Elizabethan,  194-201 ; 
popularity'  of,  196,  writers  of, 
196-200;  relation  of  words  to 
music  in  the,  197 

Songs  of  the  drama,  early,  201 ; 
of  the  predecessors  of  Shake- 
speare, 201 ;  of  Dekker,  202, 
203;  of  Shakespeare,  203-206;  of 
Fletcher,  Jonson  and  other  play- 
wrights,   206-208 

Sonnet,  introduced  by  Wyatt,  21 ; 
decade  of  the,  128;  equally 
indebted  to  France  and  Italy, 
129;  Astrophel  and  Stella,  129; 
other  earlier  sequences,  129; 
French  influence  on  the,  129, 
130;  borrowing  not  plagiarism, 
130;  height  of  the  fashion  of 
the,  130,  131;  form  of  the,  131; 


varieties  of  the,  131,  132;  the 
devotional,  132,  133;  as  an  oc- 
casional poem,  133,  134;  con- 
ceit in  the.  134;  after-his- 
tory of  the,  135;  the  five  great 
sequences  of  the,  137;  Idea,  137, 
138;  Amoretti,  139-141 ;  the 
Sonnets  of  Shakespeare,  141- 
146,  their  imitative  nature,  142; 
difficulties  about,  142;  publica- 
tion and  dedication  of,  142,  143  ; 
story  of,  144 ;  the  "other  poet," 
144;  Southampton  and,  144, 
145  ;  autobiographical  interpre- 
tation of,  145 ;  poetic  quality 
of,   145,   146 

Sophocles,  29,  250,  267,  271 

Southampton,  Henry  Wriothesley, 
third  Earl  of,  a  patron  of 
Shakespeare,  141 ;  and  Shake- 
speare's sonnets,  143,  144;  Venus 
and  Adonis  and  Lucrece  dedi- 
cated to  the,  149 ;  an  adherent 
of  Essex,  192;  216;  an  enemy  of 
Bacon,    341 

Southey,  Robert,  315 

Southwell,  Robert,  125 ;  his  devo- 
tional poetry,  125,  126;  a  con- 
cettist,   128;   193,  213,  249 

Spagnuoli,   Battista,   see    Mantuan 

Spanish  influence,  supposed  in 
Philaster,  406 ;  on  English 
drama,  416,  417 

Spanish  Moor's  Tragedy,  The, 
100 

Spedding,   J.,   294,   343,   346,    352, 

355 

Speed,  John,  continuator  of  Stow, 
294;  his  History  of  England, 
294,  297 

Spencer,  Gabriel,  actor,  killed  in 
duel   by  Jonson,  229 

Spenser,  Edmund,  19,  23 ;  his  poe- 
try that  of  the  coterie,  24;  and 
the  Areopagus,  25,  26,  28;  life 
of,  45-48;  50,  51,  53,  55.  56; 
early  translations,  46 ;  and  the 
Areopagus,  46 ;  lost  works  of, 
47;  The  Shepherds'  Calendar, 
48-50;  in  Ireland,  50-52,  54,  55: 
not  poet  laureate,  52 ;  and 
Shakespeare,  52,  53;  Colin 
Clout,  52,  53;  The  Faery 
Queen,  56-62 ;  nature  of  the 
genuis  of,  61,  62  ;  69,  80,  95  ;  104, 
III ;  Nash  on  112;  i2i ;  songs  of 


484 


INDEX 


The  Calendar,  122 ;  limitations 
of,  as  a  lyrist,  123,  125,  208 ; 
the  Amoretti  of,  130,  131,  139- 
141;  occasional  sonnets  of,  134; 
169;  in  England's  Helicon,  191, 
210,  213;  contrasted  with  Mar- 
lowe, 214;  influence  of,  221, 
222,  224,  226,  227;  stanza  of, 
disliked  by  Jonson,  248 ;  249, 
278,  280,  285,  286,  291:  friend- 
ship for  Raleigh,  296 ;  Vieiv  of 
the  State  of  Ireland,  299,  300, 
312;  h\%  Mother  Hubberd's  Tale, 
319  ;  323,  324,  349,  355,  376,  378  ; 
the  most  popular  poet  of  the 
age,  422;  the  first  folio  of,  423 

Spenserian    stanza,   the,    59-61 

Stafford,  Sir  Thomas,  on  Ireland, 
299 

Staging,  of,  a  play  at  court,  76- 
78 ;  at  the  university,  78 ;  at  a 
popular  playhouse,  85-88;  of  a 
masque,   391,   394. 

Stanihurst,  Richard,  contributor 
to  Holinshed's  Chronicle,  ii; 
his  translation  of  the  ^neid 
into  hexameters,  26,  274; 
Nash's  ridicule  of,  in,  112 

Stapleton,  Thomas,  controversial 
writings  of,   307 

Stationers'   company,   the,   114 

Stenography  or  "charactery"  in- 
vented  by  Bright.   299 

Sternhold,  Thomas,  translator  of 
the  Psalms,  352 

Stevenson,  William,  author  of 
Gammer  Gurton's  Needle,  64; 
bacchanal  song  in,  201 

Still,  John  Bishop,  alleged  author 
of  Gammer  Gurto?t's  Needle, 
46,  64 

Stow,  John,  his  Chronicles,  12,  13, 
292,  294;  his  Survey  of  Lon- 
don, 297,   298 

St.  Paul's  boys,  67,  84,  232 

Strange,  Lord,  his  players,  80,  81, 
183 

Stuart,  Lady  Arabella,  296 

Stubbes,  Philip,  his  Anatoiny  of 
Abuse,   330,    331 

Suarez,   312 

Suetonius,  translated,  273 ;  by 
Holland.  278,   383 

Surrey,  Earl  of,  Henry  Howard, 
20,    21,    22,    29,    n6,    i2x;    his 


translation  of  the  ^neid,  274; 
his  Satire  against  the  Citizens 
of  London,  318 

Sussex  players,  the  Earl  of,  81, 
183 

Swan  theater,  the,   183 

Swetnam,  Joseph,  his  attack  on 
wom.en,  329;  Siueinam  the 
JVoman   Hater,    330 

Swinburne,  A.  C,   184,  354 

Sylvester,  Joshua,  his  sonnets  to 
Henry  of  Navarre,  134;  his 
translation  of  Du  Bartas,  192, 
2S5,  286 

Tacitus,  241 ;  translated,  273  ;  294, 
348,   3S3 

Taming  of  a  Shreiu,  The,  a 
source  of  Shakespeare's  Taming 
of  the  Shrezu,  164,   165 

Tarlton,  Richard,  74,  88,  his 
Famous  Victories  of  Henry  V, 
89;    90,    104 

Tarviso,    195 

Tasso,  inspires  Spenser,  48,  130; 
56,  225 ;  translated  by  Haring- 
ton,  280;  by  Carew,  281;  by 
Fraunce,  281 ;  his  Aminta  trans- 
lated   and    imitated,    385 

Taverner,   Richard,   288 

Taylor,  John,  the  "water  poet," 
68,  214 

Tennyson,   62 

Terence,    3,    translated,    273,    378 

Theater,  the,  in  Shoreditch,  81, 
83,  loi 

Theobald,  Lewis,  his  publication 
of  The  Double  Falsehood  as  a 
play   of  Shakespeare's,  413,   414 

Theocritus,   translated,   273,   390 

Theological  writinas,  306;  their 
contemporaneousness,    306,    307 

Theophrastus,  Casaubon's  Latin 
translation  of  t'ne  Characters  of, 
inspires  the  "Character"  in 
English  literature,  331 

Thersites,    the    interlude    of,    3 

Thomas,  William,    3,    384 

Thomas    of   Walsingham,    6 

Thomas  of  Woodstock,  the  trag- 
edy of,    163 

Thorndike,  A.  H.,  on  the  influ- 
ence of  Fletcher  on  Shakespeare, 
406,  407 

Thracian   ffonder.   The,  89,   178 

Thucydides,    294 

Tibullus,  200 


INDEX 


485 


Titus  and  Gisippus.  the  play  of, 

3 
Tofte,  Robert,  his  Alba,  132;   his 
conceits;      his      translation      of 
Orlando  Inamo/ata,  281 
Tomkins,     Thomas,     his     Lingua, 

281,   382 
Tom   Tyler  and  his   Jf^ife,  89,   90 
Tottcl's  Miscellany,   2,    121 
Tourneur,  Cyril,  life  of,  259;   his 
Atheist's  and  Revenger's   Trag- 
edy, 259,  260;   his  tragic  inten- 
sity,  260;    270,   399 
Tragicomedy,     defined,     400;     of 
Philaster    type,    405,    406 ;    the 
"romances"  of  Shakespeare  and, 
406,  407,  414;  of  Fletcher,  416, 

417 
Tragedy,  first  regular,  65 ;  of  the 
choirmasters,  67,  68 ;  Peele  in, 
74;  presentation  of  early,  at 
court,  77;  at  the  university,  78; 
early  historical  and  other,  89; 
Greene  in,  91 ;  Kyd  in,  93-95 ; 
Marlowe  in,  95-100;  earliest, 
of  Shakespeare,  153,  154,  251, 
252;  Heywood  in,  179,  180;  the 
murder  plays,  184,  185;  aca- 
demic Senecan,  of  Daniel,  Gre- 
ville  and  Alexander,  240;  Jon- 
son  in  classical,  241 ;  variet.v  of 
Elizabethan,  250;  Shakespeare 
and  others  in  popular  classical, 
252-255 ;  on  contemporar}-  his- 
tory by  Chapman  and  others, 
255-257;  Marston,  Shakespeare, 
Chettle  and  Tourneur  in  the, 
of  revenge,  257-260;  of  per- 
verted womanhood  of  Middle- 
ton,  Marston  and  Webster,  260, 
261;  Webster  in,  261-264; 
Shakespeare  at  his  height  in, 
264-266 ;  the  prodigy'  of  Shake- 
speare's art  in,  266,  267;  the 
technique  and  realism  of 
Shakespeare  in  Elizabethan,  its 
range  and  variety,  250;  Sene- 
can influence  on,  250,  251; 
Shakespeare  in,  2<;i-255;  Chap- 
man in,  255-257;  of  revenge, 
257-260;  NIarston  in,  257,  260, 
261;  Chettle  in,  259;  other 
themes  of,  260;  Webster  in,  261- 
264;  later,  of  Shakespeare,  264- 
268  ;  technique  of,  268  ;  realistic 
quality    of,    269 ;     morals     and 


manners  in,  270;  height  of,  in 
Shakespeare  and  Webster,  271 ; 
qualities  of  Elizabethan,  269- 
270;  Senecan  tragedy  at  the 
universities,  378,  383;  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher  in,  406,  417, 
419 

Translation,  Elizabeth's  the  age 
of,  272 ;  commemoration  of 
books  of,  272,  273 ;  from  the 
Italian,  27a,  280-284;  from  the 
Spanish,  273,  284,  285;  from 
the  French,  273,  285,  286;  from 
the  Dutch  and  Flemish,  273 ; 
from  the  classics,  273-280;  of 
the  Bible,   287-291 

Travel,  books  of,  302-304;  by 
Moryson,  302 ;  by  Coryate, 
Sandys    and    Lithgow,    302,    303 

Travers,    Walter,    310 

Turberville,  George,  49,  121; 
translator  of  Mantuan,  2S0; 
Tragical   Tales  of,   282 

Tusser,  Thomas,  his  Hundrcth 
Good  Points   of  Husbandry,    3 

Twine,    Lawrence,    408 

Types  in  the  dramas  of  Fletcher, 
405,  406 

Tyndale,  William,  his  one  idea 
the  translation  of  the  Bible,  287; 
fixes  the  style  of  the  Bible,  287; 
his  version  employed  by  later 
revisers,  2G8 ;  his  expurgation 
of  ecclesiastical  terms,  290;  his 
Practices   of  Prelates,   307 

Tyrtamus,  of  Lesbos,  see  Theo- 
phratus 

Udall,   John,  his  Diotrephes,   114 

Udall,  Nicholas,  author  of  Ralph 
Roister  Doister,  3,  64;  songs  of, 
201 

Underbill,   J.    G.,   273    note 

Upham,  A.  H.,  273,  note 

Uter  Pendragon,  source  of  Row- 
lev's  Birth  of  Merlin,  a  plav, 
188 

Vanbrugh,  Sir  John,  249 

Vega,   Lope   de,  417 

Vergil,  3,  56,  122,  236,  translated, 

273  .        . 

Verse,  foreign,  in  English,  21,  26, 
27;  classic  and  English,  con- 
trasted, 27 

Vives,    Lodovico,    at    Oxford,    284 

Vowell,  see   Hooker,  John 


486 


INDEX 


Wager,  William,  Latin  play- 
wright, 14 

Wallace,  C.  W.,  69,  79,  81,  83, 
149,   152 

Walsingham,  Sir  Thomas,  96,  223 

Walton,  Izaak,  106,  124,  132,  298, 
310-312,  344,  364,  377 

Warham,   Archbishop,  287 

War  of  the  theaters,  232-240; 
Jonson  in  the,  233-237;  Mars- 
ton  in  the,  233,  235;  Dekker's 
part  in  the,  236;  Shakespeare 
and   the,    238-240 

Warner,  William,  8 ;  his  Pan  his 
Syrinx,  40;  his  translation  of 
the  MencEchmi,  154;  his  Al- 
bion's England,  213,  214;  224; 
his  popularity,  423 

Warning  for  Fair  Women,  A 
anonymous    murder    play,    185 

Wars  of  Cyrus,  The,  a  conquer- 
or play,   100,  240 

Watson,  Thomas,  121 ;  lyrics  and 
translations  of,  126,  127;  avows 
his  sources,  130;  his  Madrigals, 
196;    223 

Webbe,  William,  his  Discourse  of 
English  Poetry,  26;  appreciates 
Spenser,  45,  49 

Webster,  John,  90,  149,  186,  187; 
lyric  quality  of,  208;  250,  260; 
life  of,  261 ;  his  comedies  with 
Dekker,  261 ;  Appius  and  Vir- 
ginia, 261 ;  The  White  Devil, 
261,  262;  The  Duchess  of  Malfi, 
262-264;  qualities  of  the  tragic 
art  of,  262,  263 ;  his  intense 
dramatic  moments,  264;  his 
characters,  265 ;  his  excess  of 
horror,  270;  height  of  tragedy 
in  Shakespeare  and,  271;   399 

Weelkes,  Thomas,  song  writer, 
198,  204 

Weever,  John,  his  Epigrams, 
326 

Weier,    J.,    301  ^ 

Wescott,    Sebastian,    68 

Whetstone,  George,  23,  29;  his 
Promos  and  Cassandra,  66,  90, 
155,  167;  his  Rock  of  Regard, 
282;  his  Heptameron,  282 

Whitefriars,  the  theater  in,   84 


Whitehorne,  Peter,  translator  of 
Macchiavelli's  Art  of  War,  284 

Whitgift,  John,  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,    113,   307,   310 

Whittingham,  William,  translator 
of  the  Bible,  289 

Wilbye,  John,  song-writer,  197 

Wilkins,  George,  his  Miseries  of 
Enforced  Marriage,  185;  188; 
his  novel  of  Pericles,  408 

William   the    Silent,   24 

Willobie,   Henry,   his  A  visa,   132 

Wilmot,  Robert,  his  Tancred  and 
Gismunda,  66 

Wilson,  John,  composer  of  melo- 
dies for  songs  of  Shakespeare, 
203 

Wilson,  Robert,  the  elder,  a  fore- 
runner of  Shakespeare  in  the 
popular  drama,  74;  mentioned 
by  Greene,  88 ;  90,  91 ;  his 
Three  Ladies  of  London,  153, 
156 

Wilson,  Robert,  the  younger,  162, 
182 

Wilton,  Lord  Grey  de,  22,  50 

Wily  Beguiled,  the  comedy  of,  175 

Witchcraft,  Scott's  Discovery  of, 
301,   302;   King  James  on,   301 

Wither,  George,  hh  Fidelia,  135; 
136;  223,  226,  286;  his  Abuses 
Whipt  and  Slript,  327;  a  Pu- 
ritan satirist,  330;  358,  422 

Wolfe,  Reginald,  his  plan  for  a 
universal  history,  10,  ii 

Wooley,    Sir    Francis,    362 

Wordsworth,    William,    225 

Wotton,  Henry,  his  Courtly  Con- 
troversy, 282 

Wotton,  Sir  Henry,  192,  his  pro- 
jected works  and  slender 
achievement,  298 ;  his  friend- 
ship with   Donne,   358,   377 

Wyatt,  Sir  Thomas,  2,  4,  20-22, 
24,  63,   131,   128,  131,  318 

Wyclif,   John,   287 

Xenophon,  translated  by  Holland, 
278 

Xenophon   of   Ephesus,   283 

Yonge,  Nicholas,  introduces  the 
madrigal,  195-196 


14  DAY  USE 

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